


when love becomes the reason

by clarkesquad



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Neighbors, F/F, Fake/Pretend Relationship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-14
Updated: 2017-05-03
Packaged: 2018-03-17 18:12:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 41,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3539129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clarkesquad/pseuds/clarkesquad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clexa Fake Dating AU</p>
<p>The one where it's not a love story, it's a story of a girl who needs a plus one for her brother's wedding (and a girl who needs to be at that wedding).</p>
<p>Spoilers: It's a love story. It's always a love story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> follow me @ clarkesquad.tumblr.com for updates

** March 3rd, 1999. **

_The leaves of the flower are blue. No, the petals are. There are the stems and the leaves and the pollen and the petals. The petals are the prettiest part, blue like Clarke’s eyes. Lexa twirls the stem between her fingers and then lifts it to push the flower into Clarke’s blonde hair._

_“Happy birthday.”_

_“Thanks.” She pulls at her dress. “Do I look older?”_

_Lexa nods and smiles enthusiastically. “Way older. You’re so old, you might die any day now.”_

_Clarke touches the flower in her hair and then shoves Lexa’s chest. “Shut up, I’m eight, not eighty.”_

_“Whatever. I can’t believe you still talking to a seven-year-old now that you’re so much older and cooler. Aren’t you going to run off and make old friends now?”_

_Clarke frowns, pulls the flower_ _from her hair, and Lexa tilts her head to the side when Clarke’s shoulders slump._

_“What would happen if... if I did?”_

_Lexa shrugs. “We wouldn’t be best friends anymore.”_

_Clarke pouts. Lexa nearly gets distracted by a caterpillar on the ground before Clarke talks again. “I’m moving.”_

_“What do you mean?”_

_“My Mom says we’re moving to a different house. And it’s really really really really really far away. I don’t think we’re ever gonna see each other again when I do.”_

_The world spins a little when she says it, and Lexa feels her cheeks go red. Clarke is the only one who sits with her at lunch. The only one who helps her with her homework. The only one who plays with her at recess._

_“Well, that’s not fair.”_

_“I know.”_

_She gets an idea and licks her lips. “Take me with you.”_

_“I already asked my Mom if she would let me and she said no.” Clarke says it like it’s the worst thing in the world and it really feels like it is._

_“What if I convince my Dad to let me go?” She says it, but she already knows it won’t work. Her Mom would never let her go._

_“You could try.”_

_“Where are you moving?”_

_“Washington.”_

_“We already live in Washington.”_

_Clarke shakes her head, and Lexa can’t see her blue eyes anymore. She stares at the ground, her hair moving with the wind. “No, this is Washington DC. My Mom says that there’s another one, and it’s really far away.”_

_“When are you going?”_

_“She said in a month, I think.”_

_Lexa nods. “That’s okay. A month is forever.”_

_“Yeah.” She sounds sad. Lexa feels it, too._

_“Hey, you’ll come back for me, right?”_

_“‘Course, dummy, why wouldn’t I come back for my best friend?” Clarke smiles up at her and holds the flower out between them._

_Lexa takes it, twirling it again between her fingers. “Okay, then.”_

_It’s okay, then. Clarke will come back. And a month is forever._

 

** May 17th, 2015 **

Clarke pens the word ‘IKEA’ into the last four squares and lets the newspaper drop against her chest. The crossword section is the only piece of paper in her new apartment that she hasn’t drawn on, and that’s no statement about her inspiration, since it’s also one of three total pieces of paper she has. In fact, there are only about fifteen things in her apartment.  She has an inflatable mattress, a laptop, a suitcase full of clothes, a garbage can, leftover take out in the refrigerator, a bean bag chair, a lamp, and a few things that Jasper and Monty had given her to make it through the week.

In hindsight, she should have waited to move across the country again until she was sure her things would be there to meet her. Still, it beats the first time she moved back, years ago. Jasper and Monty were great roommates, as roommates go when you try to find them in less than 48 hours, but she prefers her own place.

And it's a _nice_ place. The woman who rented it out to her might actually be a saint. It's cheap, thank God, but safe and exactly the kind of place Clarke belongs in. Large windows, exposed brick walls, and hardwood floors - an apartment like this should have costed her a fortune, but seriously. Her landlord; an _actual_ saint. For the moment it's empty and boring her to death, but she still loves it.

Clarke leaves the newspaper on the floor and pushes herself up off the bean bag chair when she hears a knock at the door.

“Took you long enough.” Clarke messes with the lock and swings the door open to a wall of paper bags. “Uh.”

“Wanna help a guy out here?” Bellamy pokes his head over the top bag and offers her a smile.

“You just had to get it all in one trip, didn't you?”

“Any chance you’re gonna let me in, your highness? I just shopped for half an hour for you.”

She pulls down the edge of one of the bags and spots a case of beer. “You are a god, Bellamy Blake,” She steps back to let him in and takes a few of the bags off his hands.

Bellamy shrugs as best as he can with an armful of groceries. “Yeah, I get that a lot.”

“Sure you do.” She kicks the door shut behind her and almost runs into his back when he stops.

“Love what you clearly haven’t done with the place.”

“Yeah, tell me about it.” Clarke drops the groceries in her hands on her kitchen counter. It’s the first time it hasn’t been barren since she’s moved in. “If they don’t get my stuff here in the next three days, I’m hunting that moving truck down myself.”

“Where could it even be?”

“ _Oklahoma_.” She growls.

“Is it really?”

“Yep. I wake up to a phone call at six a.m. from a lovely couple in Tulsa, Oklahoma, saying they got a delivery truck at their door for a Clarke Griffin. They sent my stuff to the wrong damn house. _Oklahoma_ , Bellamy.”

He unloads a bag, lining the counter top with cereal boxes. “Relax, it’ll get here.”

“I've been wearing the same pair of scrubs for four days.” She loads a six-pack into the fridge.

“That’s the beauty of the uniform, who’s gonna notice?”

“Only every patient who spends more than two minutes in the same hallway with me. Any chance I can do a load of laundry at your place?”

He crushes a paper bag into a ball in his hand and makes a shot for the garbage can. He makes it. “Not tonight. I've got a hot date.”

“Don’t you always?” Clarke almost lets the cocky smile on his face grow before she hits him in the arm with a package of paper towels. “Don’t let that get to your head.”

“Too late.”

Fair enough. She walked right into that one.

“Sucks about your stuff, though. I’ll take your clothes home with me if you want, I can get it back to you by tomorrow.”

Her hands find a box of tampons while she’s looking through another paper bag and, yeah - Octavia definitely raised him right. “Bellamy, I love you,” She holds the box to her chest and turns to him. “I might actually be in love with you right now.”

“I am pretty great, aren't I?”

He slides into one of the stools across from her at the island counter and she hears the hiss of a beer can being opened. When she turns to throw another paper bag in the trashcan, she sees him run a hand through his hair. It’s getting longer now, and it behaves more than it did in college, so it doesn't look half bad. Still, she can’t help but tease him for it.

“You’d be even greater if you lost the Fabio look.”

“Are you kidding me? Girls love this look.”

“No. They don’t. I can guarantee you, they don’t.”

He looks like he’s about to say something, but he stops himself, coughing and sitting up. It only takes her a few seconds to know what’s on his mind.

Yeah. She used to love that look. She fell in love with that look when she was sixteen.

She thanks God for Bellamy’s ability to steamroll through these moments, because she’s ripped from Memory Lane when he tosses her a box.

“Got you some Almond Joys.”

She grins and her fingers start to rip into the box just before she hesitates. “Hold on. What’s wrong?”

“What? Nothing’s wrong.”

Clarke narrows her eyes at him and Bellamy squirms in his seat. “You got me Almond Joys.”

“It’s your favorite candy bar.”

“I _love_ Almond Joys.”

“Doesn't sound like a crime to buy you your favorite candy bar.”

She sets the box on the table and crosses her arms. “I asked you for 2% milk and hot pockets on your way back from the store.”

“I know.”

“You came back with candy, beer, tampons,” She rifles through the rest of the bags. “You got me oranges?”

“Everyone needs Vitamin C.”

Weak. She doesn't buy it.

“Spill.”

He caves, sighing and sliding a beer across the counter. “You should sit.”

“Should I be scared?”

“No, it’s good. It’s really good, actually.” Bellamy smiles, and it’s one of the smiles she’s only ever seen him reserve for Octavia or Raven. And every once in a while Jasper and Monty. And Clarke, of course.

“O just got engaged.”

Clarke feels her heart sink, and she does everything she can to smile.

“That’s great, Bellamy.”

Because she should be happy.

“I’m really happy for her.”

She would be happy, had she heard it from Octavia.

“Yeah, it’s really good, she seems happy.” He nods.

“Does she?”

She wouldn't know, would she?

“She does.”

“How did Lincoln propose?”

Bellamy scoffs and sips his beer. “Have you met my sister? Do you really think _he_ proposed?”

God, that does sound like Octavia to be the one to propose. “Right, of course.”

“She was really happy, though. It was amazing. She invited every- she invited a bunch of us up north over the weekend and we went to the bar that she proposed in - over a bar fight, by the way. You should’ve seen Raven’s face when she told the story, I've never seen anyone more proud.”

Clarke laughs, because it’s a better alternative to crying, and Bellamy deserves to be happy about this.

She isn't doing a good job of it, because he stops talking and stares at the beer in his hand, rotating it on the counter top. “Truth is I wasn't going to tell you, but-”

“No, I’m glad you did, Bellamy.”

She is, she really is glad. She likes knowing about everything they do. She misses hearing it from them, but she needs to know. She needs to know they’re okay without her. “Do you, um... Do you tell them about my stuff?”

He nods. “I tell Raven everything.”

Clarke laughs and it’s genuine. She doesn't need to look up to see that he’s rolling his eyes, and that’s good, because if she looks up from the beer in her hands, he’ll see that she’s blinking back tears. He doesn't need to see that.

“Don’t even go there, Clarke.”

She licks her lips and blinks enough to trust herself to look up. “Whatever you say, Romeo.” She laughs but it’s dry. Hollow. “So, I take it Octavia still doesn't want to hear about me?”

Bellamy shakes his head - it’s subtle, solemn. She knows he hates answering this question, as much as she hates to ask it.

“You should have been there, Clarke. I know she wanted you there. On some level, you have to know she misses you. She’s gonna look back one day and wish you were there. I know it.”

“Yeah.” She nods, her eyes drifting back to the label on the beer bottle. “Finn, too.”

 

** December 2nd** **, 2010 **

_Octavia and Raven are at the bar until 11, and their fourth roommate spends her nights exclusively in her boyfriend’s dorm, so when the door swings open in the common room, Clarke briefly considers pulling Raven’s softball bat down from the closet to protect herself._

_Until she smells his cologne._

_He’s smiling at her with a paper bag in his arms when she turns around. “Somebody order a study break?”_

_No, she hadn’t, but it’s no shock that he’d be good enough to remember when all her stressful exams are._

_“Is that Little Toni’s?”_

_Finn grins at her and drops the bag on her desk, pulling forks and napkins from his jacket pocket. “Yeah, your favorite. I brought some for Octavia and Raven, too.”_

_Clarke shovels a breadstick into her mouth – it’s the first real_ _food she’s had all day – and moans. It's the best breadstick she’s ever had in her life. She chews for a few seconds, savoring the taste before washing it down with the soda he hands her. “Octavia won the match, so they all went out for drinks.”_

_“That’s what? Four games in a row? I hope Lincoln’s not taking it too hard.”_

_“Are you kidding me?” Clarke pushes her notes together to make room for their take out boxes on her desk. “He might be on the rival team, but there’s no way he was rooting for his school.”_

_“Smart man.”_

_They burn a hole through the carton of ravioli in less than a minute and Finn reaches for her hand. She squeezes his fingers and smiles._

_“How’s the studying going?”_

_“It’s gross anatomy. It’s gross. It’s anatomy. Kind of speaks for itself.”_

_“Welcome to Med School, Princess.”_

_“Yeah.” She shrugs and eats another breadstick while he talks about his day. If it was a year ago, maybe even six months, she might have listened a little more. Now she just nods along._

_She zones back in when he stops eating. “Am I totally interrupting your studying right now?”_

_“No, no, you’re fine. I’ve been reading the same exact page on the gluteal femoral region for the past forty minutes. You’re fine.”_

_“I have no idea what that means.”_

_She laughs – he’s cute when he doesn’t understand a word that she’s saying, because he’s the only person who actually tries to decode it._

_“Why don’t you take a study break with me?”_

_“Because I’ve been reading the same exact page on the gluteal femoral region for the past forty minutes.”_

_Finn laughs, and it’s innocent. He believes her. “Gotcha. Should I get out of your way?”_

_Her heart aches. He says that a lot these days. She doesn’t deserve it._

_“C’mere.” Clarke pulls him by his jacket, pressing her lips against his and tangling the fingers of her free hand through his hair. It’s getting longer again, just like it was when they were sixteen. She loves his longer hair._

_She loves him._

_She does._

_She has to._

_Clarke deepens the kiss, parting his lips and pulling him closer. He reacts like he always does, with enthusiasm and love and care. She considers pulling him up out of his chair, pushing him back against the bed, losing their clothes and forgetting about everything for a while. They haven’t had sex in a while. And it’s always been good._

_But it’s almost midnight and she doesn’t have it in her right now. She doesn’t have the emotional stamina._

_Clarke pulls back, offering him a smile. “You should probably meet Raven and Octavia at the bar.”_

_He nods, licking his lips and pulling himself out of whatever haze her kiss put him in. “Yeah, that sounds good.”_

_“I promise they’ll be more fun than me tonight.”_

_He grins and kisses her again. “Not a chance.”_

_He looks like he might kiss her again, but he must see the_ Not tonight _in her eyes, because he pulls back. “Okay. I’ll say hi to them for you.”_

_“Thanks.”_

_“Love you, Clarke.”_

_She smiles and leans back in her chair. “Actually, you love the shell of a girl that used to be Clarke Griffin before she took a gross anatomy course.”_

_“Fine, don’t say it back.” He jokes. “Romance killer.”_

_She leans forward and lands a peck against his lips. “Bye, Finn.”_

_“Bye.” He kisses her forehead and leaves the room with a wave, leaving Clarke alone at her desk. She has one breadstick left. She taps against her desk with her pen and sighs._

_She used to say it back._

 

** May 18th** **, 2015 **

_“Across our planet, abandoned cities and apocalyptic dead zones hide in plain sight. Boom towns where the boom went bust. Industrial powerhouses, deserted and decaying. Once prosperous cities, now too toxic for human life. This is a glimpse of what the future might hold for the places each of us calls home._

_It appears to be a typical Italian vill-“_

Lexa's documentary pauses on the picture of a set of homes on a hill, the circle over the screen buffering, frozen at 48%. Lexa moves to pick up her glass of wine and settle back into the couch with her laptop. It’s still buffering. Still at 48%.

She sighs, rubs her temples, and pretends she can’t hear Diana and her Bingo club – there’s four of them, all of them at least 80 years old, all of them hard of hearing, all of them screaming over Bingo, as they do every Saturday Night.

It gives her a headache.

Her stream is still at 48%.

Her mind wanders towards everything and nothing. She has a meeting next Friday that she needs to be ready for, and of course she’ll be ready. She’ll most likely be ready by Tuesday. She goes over the pitch in her head, and then moves on to thinking of something less trivial.

She’s been considering purchasing a Betta fish.

She hears a thud from two apartments down and Lexa really hopes it’s not one of Diana’s friends. She doesn’t want to get off this couch. She really doesn’t want to get out of this robe. She just wants to watch her documentary.

Which is still buffering at 48%.

At least she doesn’t need to worry about her new neighbor, not in the way that she does about Diana, because she’s really the only person in the apartment complex who knows Diana, and that leaves Lexa with a sense of responsibility. If the woman ever decides to drop dead one day, she’d most likely do something about it. But, she doesn’t worry about her new neighbor. She’s young and healthy and not at all the Life Alert type.

She’s actually very pretty, but Lexa is sure she knows that. And she’s sure the tall and muscular man who brought her groceries and left with a suitcase in his hand knows that, too.

She really is pretty, though. Lexa can hear her mother’s voice in her head already, the one begging her not to die alone. It seems like a dramatic request to her, implying there’s something inherently wrong with doing just that. Dying alone. She’s never been opposed to the idea, as long as she doesn’t become the type of senior citizen who plays bingo at ungodly hours. Anything sounds better than that, even dying alone.

She’d even enjoy dying alone if her stream would finish buffering.

Lexa tries to disconnect and reconnect the wifi a few times before she realizes the problem.

She spoke too soon about her neighbor.

She’s never had this problem before. Diana swears against the internet, so it couldn’t be her. Lexa checks the time on her laptop. 2:07. Maybe this is horrible manners, but she’s not known for being cordial, and her stream is still frozen at 48%. Desperate times.

She leaves her wine glass behind and pulls her robe together, tying it on her way out of the apartment. The other door, _her_ door, isn’t far, just a few steps past her own doorsteps.

She scowls before knocking. This shouldn’t be necessary.

Lexa counts to twenty before the door swings open, leaving her standing in front of her new neighbor – and thankfully she’s awake, because that means she’s probably right about this.

“Hey,” The girl smiles the kind of smile that Lexa firmly believes nobody should be capable of at this hour. “You’re my neighbor right?”

Lexa nods, glancing down and back up to take in her look – flannel shorts and a white tank top. She has mismatched socks on, and if she wasn’t the reason that Lexa was out of her apartment at 2 a.m., she’d take a minute to notice that she’s much more attractive than she remembered.

“Yes, I am. Did I wake you?”

“Figured it was you, I recognize the glare. I think I saw you after my friend left this morning. And no, I wasn’t sleeping.” She leans forward, with absolutely no respect for personal space, turning her head to look into the hallway. “Gotta say, you guys have a pretty strange welcoming committee. It’s kinda late for a welcome basket.”

Lexa clears her throat. “I came to ask about – Are you using my wifi?”

The girl cringes. “Shit. Are you Woods92?”

“Yes.”

“Sorry.”

She actually looks guilty, and it almost makes Lexa want to forgive her, but that’s not what she does. “I’m really sorry, my stuff was supposed to get here a couple days ago, I swear, I just haven’t gotten my wifi set up and I totally would have if I had anything but a sleeping bag in here, I swear. I’m usually way more practical than this.”

“Right.” She doesn’t know why she’s agreeing with her. “Well, I hope you’re not doing anything illegal. Especially since it’s slowing down my Netflix stream.” Lexa scowls some more. She already misses her glass of wine. “My documentary won’t stop buffering.”

“Well, don’t worry, nothing illegal on my end, I promise.” She tilts her head to the side and leans back on her heels. “Frowned upon? Maybe. Illegal, probably not.”

Lexa narrows her eyes.

“I might have been watching porn?” She squeezes her eyes shut and clenches her fists. “I have no idea why I just told you that. You’re a total stranger.”

Suddenly she thinks this visit might have been worth it. “Porn?”

“I cannot stress enough how little I have to do to occupy my time in this house, I’ve drawn on everything I own, I’m gonna start painting the walls soon, I’ve worked overtime four nights in a row, just for the hell of it.”

She keeps her lips pressed together to fight a smile. This girl can’t be real. She seems nervous, and when she runs a hand through her hair, Lexa frowns. She feels familiar.

The girl must feel it too, because she scratches at the back of her head and flips on a light from inside her apartment. “Hey, do I know you from somewhere?”

Lexa studies her. Blue eyes. Blonde hair. She looks like every secretary her father has ever hired, every girl her brother has ever dated – except for this new one, Oceana or Olivia or something with an O.

“I don’t think so.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right. That’s great,” She notes bitterly. “Fantastic. So, just to be clear, that means your first impression of me is definitely gonna be ‘the stranger who watches porn on her neighbor’s wifi’, right? Great.”

She fights another smile while the girl gestures behind her.

“I’m just gonna go stop streaming my stuff so you can finish your documentary, and then we can just… pretend this never happened.”

“If we must.”

The girl keeps smiling at her, and she’s in danger of slipping into one too, so out of impulse, Lexa opens her mouth to speak. “What’s your name?”

“Clarke.”

Interesting name. It feels _familiar_.

“Promise me you’ll forget that in the morning?”

Lexa nods. “I suppose.”

Clarke almost moves to shut the door but she changes her mind, leaning back against the door frame. “And what’s your name?”

“Lexa.”

“Lexa. Already forgetting it.”

“Whatever you say… Clarke.” The name feels strange rolling off her tongue. She hasn’t heard a name like that in a long time. She likes it.

“’Night, neighbor.”

The door clicks shut between them and Lexa pulls her robe tighter. She lets out a puff of air, almost a laugh. Four women who play bingo at top volume and an attractive girl watching pornography on her wifi. Her neighbors are nothing if not interesting.

Dying alone sounds more peaceful by the day. 

 

-

Bellamy pulls through for her by 9am, dropping off a load of laundry, and he really is a godsend, but he’s also a fantastic future stay-at-home Dad because he evens folds Clarke’s hoodies. When she stayed with Jasper and Monty last year, she was lucky if Jasper folded her jeans on laundry duty. She picks a blue plaid and throws it over a white tank top, jeans, and a pair of black boots.

Unsurprisingly, Bellamy still forgot to buy the hot pockets she asked for, so she uses it as an excuse to go to shopping across the street.

And since it’s her day off, and her things still haven’t showed up, when she gets an impulse, she acts on it.

Clarke knocks on Lexa’s door with her foot. Her hands are full and she nearly drops the take out in her hands when she sees her – when she sees what she’s wearing. There’s a very important difference between Lexa in a robe and Lexa in a button up gray shirt, tucked into a pair of black skinny jeans, tucked into a pair of black boots. Clarke’s mind blanks a little bit because _wow_ , and she figures this is as good a time as any to stop falling for every girl she lays eyes on. Because this is her neighbor and she should really be making friends soon. She’s only made two new friends since she transferred, two new friends since she moved back to Maryland, then back home, then back to Maryland again. Two new friends. She could use a friend. It’s not practical to be attracted to every girl she sees.

It’s also not practical to blankly stare at her like this. Clarke clears her throat. “Hey, sorry, is this a bad time?”

“I knock on your door at 2 a.m. and you’re asking me if the middle of the day is a bad time?”

Clarke shrugs and readjust the bags in her arms. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, that never happened.”

“Right.” Lexa nods, and she’s got that hint of a smile on her face that tells Clarke she’s doing something right.

“Well, hey, I brought food. If you’re not busy, I made some cookies and that’s already a lie because I got these at the store and I also got this dish at the store and I got this plastic wrap at the store and I already told you that I have pretty much nothing in my house, and I think you’re probably smart enough to realize that I definitely didn’t make these.”

Lexa nods. Clarke definitely has a chance at turning that half smile into a full one. “I think you’re probably right.”

She seems to be hesitating, but it’s not a no yet, so Clarke tries again. “So, are you busy or do you feel like eating twice your weight in Chinese food? I was thinking I could try a second shot at a first impression. Maybe we can watch a movie or something?”

Lexa’s eyes scan her up and down and she steps aside, giving her a slow nod. “That sounds... nice.”

Clarke feels inferior the second she steps inside.

“Wow, nice place.” Lexa closes the door behind them and Clarke takes the lead towards the couch, dropping the food on the coffee table. She wanders towards the window. “You have a killer view.”

“I don’t see much of a reason to. I don’t ever look at it, and it makes the rent unnecessarily expensive.”

“Sure is pretty, though.”

Her house smells like a furniture store, as if everything in Lexa’s life is stationary, unmoving, unchanging, forever trapped in plastic wrap. She can’t remember a day in her life when her own house smelled so new or felt so empty. Not even now, with nothing in it.

Still, she has excellent taste in just about everything.

Sure is pretty.

“Alright, any movie ideas? Your place, so. Your pick.”

“I was planning on watching a historical film on the war of 1812 this weekend, how does that sound?”

Awful. Boring. Like the worst movie ever made, but she did use a complete stranger’s wifi to watch porn, so maybe she can let Lexa have this one.

“Sounds great, you have good taste.”

“Thank you, Clarke.” Lexa says her name like an experiment. She likes the sound.

“Ah ah, you don’t know my name yet.” Clarke carries herself back towards the couch, reaching a hand out to take Lexa’s shaking it. “Clarke Griffin, at your service.”

“Lexa Woods… at yours.”

“No.”

“What do you mean ‘No’?”

“Lexa Woods?”

Lexa opens her mouth and shuts it again, and _of course it’s her_. Always too hesitant to speak her mind, always needing to think it through. She got that from her Dad, even as a kid. She’s more formal now, much more business-like, much more disciplined, but she’s absolutely _her_. And damn did puberty treat her well.

She must have remembered her too, because Lexa smiles. For the first time, it’s a real one, a whole one, and she knows she would have remembered her earlier had she smiled like that. “Clarke Griffin.”

“Holy shit.”

Lexa shakes her head. “I couldn’t agree more.”

“Like _holy shit_ , what are the odds?”

“Probably a million to one."

“Alright, screw the movie,” Clarke drops herself on the couch and Lexa follows her lead. She reaches for an eggroll. “We have some catching up to do.”

 

-

**Woods (12:11pm):** _Cancel my 2 o’clock_

 

-

“Wait, are you telling me you’re 23 years old and you’re already some big CEO?” Clarke hops onto one of Lexa’s marble countertops and tips back a glass of wine. It’s probably the most expensive alcohol she’s had in years.

“No, I’m a Manager, it’s much different. I answer to a Director, who answers to a Vice President, who answers to the CEO.”

“And everyone who isn’t the Director or the Vice President or the CEO… answers to _you_.”

“Not exactly. There are multiple Directors, multiple Vice Presidents, and multiple Managers. I don’t answer to them, but they don’t answer to me, and the people who answer to them don’t necessarily answer to me.”

“You work in a tall building and you’re in charge.” Clarke clarifies.

“Essentially.”

“Impressive.”

“Thank you.”

Lexa smiles into her wine glass. She’s proud of herself. Clarke would be too.

“What do you do, Clarke?”

“I wheel patients around hospitals… pretty much all day long.”

“Are you a nurse?”

She hates this question. “No, I’m not. I never finished my degree. But I still wanted to work in a hospital, so I thought I’d give this a try, for a while.”

“Why?”

She stares into her wine glass, twirling it, getting lost in the dark liquid. “I guess I wanted to help people.” Clarke takes a drink of it while Lexa stands up straight, propping herself up by the palm of her hand next to Clarke’s thigh.

“That’s honorable.”

“I guess.”

“What else is there?”

Clarke blinks at her. “What do you mean what else?”

“You’re the one who suggested we play twenty questions. We’ve gone through three.”

“Right. Okay, uh, how about… your dog. What happened to Sammy?”

“It was sixteen years ago, Clarke, I’m sure you can probably guess.”

Yeah, valid point. “God, you’re right. Okay, let’s see.” She bites her lip, staring into the wine glass. “How’s your Mom doing?”

“Divorced. Remarried.”

“Really?”

“I have a brother now.” She says it like it’s unnecessary, like an ugly decoration on an otherwise perfect mantel.

“She had another kid? At her age?”

“No, he came with the husband.”

Clarke laughs. She keeps doing that, Lexa keeps making her laugh with the way that she talks. They’re on their second glass of wine, and Clarke can only describe her new friend (old friend?) as a robot with a high vocabulary and a sarcastic side. Which is the strangest combination she could imagine, but she likes it.

“I can tell you two are very close.”

“Inseparable.”

Clarke laughs again.

 

-

**Anya (12:11pm):** _Done. Will you be available for your 3 o’clock with Indra?_

**Woods (1:34pm):** _Cancel that too._

 

-

Lexa lets her stay for three hours before she has to go to work, and Clarke doesn’t know her well enough yet to know if that’s the truth or if she was just trying to get rid of her. That’s all she comes out of Lexa’s apartment knowing for sure.

She doesn’t know her yet.

She thought she might have, but Clarke knows neither of them are the girls they used to be. Still, there’s something familiar about them. Like that sense of comfort she has around a distant relative. Like Lexa’s a familiar smell. A home away from home. She trusts Lexa. She really wants to _know_ Lexa.

Clarke falls back against her door when it shuts behind her and she considers going out. Maybe getting a drink with Bellamy or going to an Art Museum with Monty. She doesn’t feel like sitting alone in an empty apartment right now.

And her thoughts have great timing, because it’s then that she feels three knocks against the door she’s still leaning against. Clarke blinks herself out of her haze and pulls it open.

“Clarke Griffin?” She spots the label on his nametag and breathes a sigh of relief.

“Oh thank God, finally.”

“Sorry for the delay, ma’am.” The man has a thick southern accent and he’s at least a foot taller than her, in a khaki uniform, with a clipboard in hand. “If you’ll just sign here we can start moving in your boxes.”

She takes the clipboard and scribbles half-heartedly. “Thank you…” Clarke eyes his nametag, “Ralph.”

“Not a problem. I have a team waiting in the truck, where do you want your boxes?”

“You know what, you guys take care of the furniture, I know just the team to take care of the boxes.”

 

-

Clarke leans across the table to pick up the last slice of pizza before Jasper can add it to his pile of six. She shakes her head. “No, there’s no way.”

“I’m serious.” Jasper nods and looks between Clarke and Bellamy. “Swear to God, she’s totally into me.”

Bellamy throws down what’s left of his wings and shakes his head. “You say that about every girl.”

“This girl’s different, I swear!” He turns in his chair to look towards the living room. “Monty, back me up here.”

Monty looks up from where he’s kneeling at the base of the entertainment center and shrugs. Clarke feels a little bad that he’s getting dragged into this, partly because she knows he still has a crush on Jasper – he always has, and partly because he’s setting up her TV free of charge. She figures he deserves a break.

“Fine, if she’s so into you, what’s her number, huh?” Clarke leans back in her chair, drinking one of Monty’s wine coolers.

“I haven’t asked her for it yet.”

Bellamy laughs. “Oh, no?”

“I’m playing hard to get.”

They laugh at that one together, and Clarke almost makes a comment about Jasper’s complete lack of self-control when they hear a knock at the door.

The room goes silent, and Clarke smiles. Three short knocks and then silence. Not hard to guess who’s behind the door.

“Who's that?” Bellamy asks.

“Just a neighbor, I think.” Clarke sits up and pushes her chair in, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear and smoothing out her shirt, brushing crumbs off her chest.

Jasper sits up. “A hot neighbor?”

“How would I know?”

“Uh, ‘cause you have eyes?”

Bellamy purses his lips. “And you’re primping.”

“Primping?” She resists the urge to run a hand through her hair, even if it always looks better after she does.

“Visibly.”

“Just give me a second,” She says, rolling her eyes and crossing the apartment floor to open the door.

It’s Lexa, she knew it was her, but she still smiles when she sees her. “Hey.”

“Hi.” Lexa offers her a soft smile and it throws Clarke off long enough for the door to swing open too far, far enough for Jasper to see Lexa. A mistake she shouldn't have made.

His voice is at an octave deeper than usual when he steps up behind Clarke and offers his hand to Lexa. “Jasper Jordan at your service, my lady.”

_My lady?_

Lexa doesn’t take his hand. Clarke laughs, and she’s pretty sure she can hear Bellamy cracking up behind them. Clarke looks over at Monty, who is smiling at the electronics he’s tinkering with.

“Lexa, these are some of my friends from college.” She does everything she can to twist her face into something that communicates _I’m deeply sorry_. “Guys, this is Lexa. My neighbor.”

Jasper pulls his hand back and folds his together. “Lovely to meet you.”

“I’m sure.” Lexa gives him a curt smile and pulls her hands from behind her back, holding up a tray. “I came to give you your dish. For the cookies.”

Jasper takes this as his dismissal and slinks back towards Bellamy.

“Oh. Thanks.” She chews on the inside of her lip and takes it from her. “Hey, do you wanna come in? We finally got my furniture in and we were gonna play poker.”

“Poker isn’t really a hobby of mine.”

“Afraid we’d kick your ass?”

Lexa blinks at her as if she’s offended, but it’s not long before that turns into the hint of a smile. “I’m afraid I’d bankrupt you, actually. What a deplorable way ruin a blossoming friendship.”

Definitely a robot with a high vocabulary. Clarke rolls her eyes and grins. What a cute robot she is, though.

“I expect you to prove that to me one day.”

“I look forward to it.”

Clarke sets the dish onto the table by the door, next to her keys. She checks back to see Bellamy and Jasper talking over a television remote while Monty stands up and turns on the TV monitor. Clarke looks back at Lexa and slips into the hallway, closing the door behind her.

“Sorry, I know my friends can be a bit much.”

“It’s alright.”

“Listen, um… do you wanna hang out sometime, though? Maybe tomorrow? Unless you have work. Today was fun.”

Lexa nods. “It _was_ fun.”

Clarke thinks of the emptiness of her apartment and the business-casual clothes she seems to wear everyday and she thinks that maybe Lexa could use a little more fun in her life.

Lexa smiles to herself and adds, “And I hope you’re not just using me for my unrestricted wifi again. Which I password protected this morning, if you’re wondering.”

“Hey, you promised to forget that, and you’re doing a horrible job of it.”

Lexa's lips quirk up at what's quickly becoming an inside joke of theirs. “My apologies.”

“Anyway, it doesn’t matter. My friend, Monty, just got mine all set up.” She runs a hand through her hair, because Lexa still looks incredible and she’s been unpacking boxes for the past four hours. “But we should hang out. Catch up. Get coffee or something. You can tell me about that documentary you were watching last night.”

“Forgotten Planet. It’s a good series.”

“Sounds great. Wanna get a drink and you can sell me on it?”

“I could agree to a drink.”

“Okay, then. A drink.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lexa has a really hard time saying no to Clarke.

**One Month Later.**

Monty locks his hands behind his back as they walk, glancing between the different pieces of artwork with the gaze of a man who knows absolutely nothing about art. But he’s a good sport, and Clarke appreciates the effort.

Unfortunately, it does her no good. Not today. Her inspiration has been missing in action for at least a week now, and even a trip to the Art Museum isn’t helping the way it usually does.

Monty hums at a particularly nice piece to his left and then turns to Clarke. “Does Bellamy seem different to you lately?”

“Different how?”

“We played Halo last night.” He looks at her like that fact alone is proof that the world is tilting on its axis.

“What does that mean?”

“When was the last time Bellamy Blake was free on a Friday night?”

That's a fair point. “Well… he wasn’t _free_.” Clarke shrugs. “He was playing Halo.”

Monty squints at her, stopping their walk. “You know something.”

She does.

“Tell me.”

Clarke laughs, dropping herself on a white bench. Monty takes a seat next to her untouched sketchbook. “He’s been spending a lot more time with Octavia lately. Wedding stuff, I guess.”

“Yikes.” Monty knows about Octavia, knows about everything, really. At the end of the day, he’s the only one she really feels like she can talk to about it. He’s disconnected from it. Even if Bellamy understands it better, sometimes that’s what makes it worse.

“Don’t worry, I’m… I’m handling it well. I think.” She shrugs. “Anyway, he’s spending more time with Octavia, and with _Octavia,_ ” she says, “Comes _Raven_.”

“Raven.” He repeats the name, trying to place it. He nods when it comes to him. “Right, Raven. College roommate. Your high school friend.” He stumbles over the words and sits on his hands like it’ll shut him up. It doesn’t. “So, Bellamy and Raven?”

“I _think_ so. He tells me there’s nothing there, but I don’t buy it.”

“So. If he likes this Raven, why was he free last night?”

“You haven’t met Raven.”

Monty nods and Clarke tries to ignore the way that her heart sinks. If she had made better choices, her friends might actually know each other. If she had made better choices, she could call Raven and Octavia her friends. But, if she had made better choices she wouldn’t know Monty or Jasper.

Maybe they weren’t the worst choices.

Monty nudges her side. “So, any inspiration hit you yet?”

“I don’t think so.” Clarke picks up her sketchbook, flipping to a blank page and looking around the room. Paintings scattered across the walls do nothing to fuel her creativity. She’s seen all these before.

“Why don’t you draw me?”

Monty looks eager and helpful, as usual.  He’s really a gift, and this is exactly why everyone loves him. This is why Clarke loves him. This is why Clarke can’t understand what Jasper doesn’t seem to see in him. He’s not Clarke’s type – she prefers her dates a little more… exciting. Engaging. But Jasper doesn’t really seem to have a type, anyway. He prefers his dates walking, talking, and breathing, but that’s about it. Then again, Monty offers Clarke a smile and she thinks maybe Monty deserves better than someone who might only be settling for him

“Yeah.” She nods, it’s not a bad idea. She’s been wanting to draw people more and more lately. “Alright.”

Monty takes the task seriously, turning to face her, crossing his legs, and sitting up as straight as he can. Clarke turns too. Her pencil makes its first stroke – the line of Monty’s jaw – and she realizes she’s missed the familiar sound of pencil scraping across paper.

Monty speaks again when she’s halfway into outlining his hair. “We don’t do this much anymore.”

She knows what he means, and she does feel a little guilty. “I know, we really don’t.”

“You’ve been spending a lot more time with Lexa.”

It sounds enough like an accusation for Clarke to raise an eyebrow at him, but Monty’s not the type to hold things like this against her. Even if maybe she deserves it.

He’s really not wrong about the Lexa thing.

“Not judging, just observing.” He keeps his head in the same place, splaying his fingers out against his knees.

“Well, yeah.” Clarke shrugs and looks back to her sketch. She erases the curve of his nose, trying again. She’s distracted now. Usually she doesn’t sketch all over the place like this. “She was my best friend as a kid. What would you do if you’d been separated from Jasper for sixteen years?”

“Fair point.”

“And, if I’m being honest…” Clarke taps her pencil against her leg, eyes glazing over as she looks at her sketch. “She fascinates me.”

Monty relaxes his pose, and Clarke takes it as a cue to get back to work. She pokes her tongue out the edge of her mouth and focuses on her shading.

“She’s a girl, not a piece of art, Clarke.”

She begs to differ. Lexa feels like both.

“Lexa’s just. She’s really different.”

“Sixteen years will do that to you.”

Clarke looks around, soaking up the masterpieces around her for inspiration. Inspiration for her sketch. Inspiration for her thoughts. Inspiration to put someone like Lexa into _words_.

“She’s closed off. There are entire years of her life that she just… won’t talk about. There are people she won’t talk about. And I get that, I mean – you _know_ I get that.” She shrugs. “But I open up to people. Eventually, you know.” Clarke stares into Monty’s eyes – the ones on her paper. They’re a little uneven, but she can fix that. “She just seems like this totally boring loner type who doesn’t care about anything or anyone, and I know that’s what she wants people to think, but that’s not who she is.”

“No?”

“Last night, we spent _forty-five minutes_ debating which season of glee should have been the last.”

Monty doesn’t hesitate. “Third season, no question.”

“See, that’s what I said. Lexa said season one was the only one worth watching. And barely, at that.”

Monty furrows his eyebrows. “Fascinating.”

“Exactly. And you know, I feel like I know stuff about her that nobody else does.” She’s not totally sure why she’s still talking about this, but she can’t really talk to Lexa about Lexa, so she’s grateful that Monty nods at her to continue.

“Well, that’s good.”

“But at the same time, I feel like I don’t even know her.”

“Not so good.”

She almost goes into more detail, but Monty is still being an angel posing for her, and she’s gone on tangents about Lexa to him and Bellamy before, so maybe for once she can keep it short and go back to what she was doing. Clarke picks up her pencil where she left off, doing some more shading while Monty hums a song that she doesn’t recognize.

It takes her another fifteen minutes to come up with a decent enough sketch, and she decides that maybe she’s not completely dried up for artistic inspiration. Monty is a few minutes into a conversation about his co-worker, Miller, when Clarke holds up the sketchbook.

“Alright, all done. Sort of.”

Monty picks it up and analyzes it, stroking a fake beard. He gives her a solid nod and smiles. “Damn, I look good.”

“Shut up.” She takes the sketchbook back and packs up her things, not looking at the sketch again. If she looks any closer, she might have to admit that the frame of his face looks a little like someone who is _not_ Monty. “Thanks, Monty.”

“Of course.”

She really loves Monty.

-

Clarke feels her phone vibrate in her pocket as she wheels Mr. Ashby to room 210. It’s before 9am on a Friday, so that means it can only be one person, really. She only knows one person who loathes herself enough to be up that early.

Besides herself, of course.

They come to a stop inside the hospital room and she helps him out of his chair. “Well, it’s been a trip, Mr. Ashby, but duty calls.” She hooks a thumb behind her. “Same time tomorrow?”

“Not if I have anything to say about it.” He grumbles, they’re the same words he says every single day. He really hates his physical therapy.

“May we meet again.”

“Sure hope so, doll, the doc says I’m in for another surgery this afternoon.”

“We have very talented doctors, Mr. Ashby. You’ll be in good hands.”

He mumbles something under his breath and Clarke is in too good of a mood to stick around any longer. She gives him a mock salute and turns on her heel, pulling her phone out of her pocket as soon as she’s in the hallway again.

She doesn’t need to check the text, but she knows it’s some variation of the words _is now an appropriate time to call you_?

Lexa is nothing but proper when it comes to communication.

Clarke hits the fourth number on her speed dial just as she hits the down button for the elevator.

“Clarke.”

“Lexa, hey. I got your text.”

“Yes, I was hoping to call to see if we could make arrangements for this evening. My team and I are taking off early today, I wasn’t sure what time you would be free tonight.”

Clarke steps into the elevator and presses the button for the lobby. “I’m probably gonna be a little late, today, actually. Busy day. Kane’s already been hinting that he wants me to work overtime.”

“Are you at work right now?”

“Yeah, I know, I don’t usually take this shift but it’s seriously hectic around here today.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t intend to interrupt–“

The elevator doors slide open and Clarke almost cringes – Kane is _right there_ at the front desk, and he’s already waving her over.

“No, no, don’t worry about it, I’m on my break right now.” She wonders if she can pretend she didn’t see Kane. His scowl tells her that’s not really an option. “You have really good timing, it’s fine.”

She can already picture the way she knows Lexa is nodding right now. Clarke has gotten used to her mannerisms again. She likes that. She wonders if Lexa can do the same with her.

“Good. How are you, Clarke?”

Kane raises an eyebrow and she tries to give him a smile that won’t totally piss him off. He sighs.

“Exhausted, really. I might have stayed up all night. Fair warning, there’s a very good chance I’ll fall asleep on you tonight, so have a pot of coffee ready or something.”

“If you’d like to sleep instead of coming over, I wouldn’t mind.”

“No, no.” Clarke turns to lean against the wall. “I’ll be fine. You’re more fun than sleep.”

She hears a soft laugh and it makes her smile. “I think some of my employees would beg to differ.”

Clarke grins, thinking of Lexa handing out orders left and right at work. She’s scary enough when she argues with Clarke about television, seeing her at work is probably next level.

“I have a feeling your employees and I know two very different Lexas.”

“You might be right.”

-

Lexa unbuttons the top three buttons of her blouse in the mirror. She doesn’t allow herself to rebutton and unbutton, she doesn’t allow herself to overthink it. She doesn’t allow herself to second guess herself again and again and again, like she always wants to as of late.

Besides. She doesn’t need to impress anyone. She’s never particularly cared for the opinions of others, and Clarke Griffin is no different.

Except that’s a bold-faced lie.

She mentally drops the subject, moving to the couch to relax until Clarke arrives.

She doesn’t relax. Clarke had told her the other night that she doesn’t think Lexa has relaxed since she was seven years old. She might have been right about that.

Clarke sends her a text around 7:00 p.m. to tell her that she might be late. She walks through the unlocked door at exactly 8:04 p.m. with a brown paper bag in her hand and a smile on her face. Lexa has a working theory that Clarke eats Chinese food exclusively, because they almost always eat from the same takeout place when Clarke brings dinner.

“Hey. Hope you haven’t been having too much fun without me.”

When she finds herself cringing, Lexa realizes she should have at least pretended to be do something when Clarke walked through the door. “I was watching television.”

“The TV’s off.” Clarke notes, dropping herself into the cushion beside Lexa.

“My movie just ended.”

“Uh huh.” Clarke pulls a series of white boxes from the bag – more food than either of them could eat in a week, probably. But that’s the only way Clarke knows how to buy food. She’s still in her work clothes – purple scrubs and white tennis shoes. She looks… charming. Her presence is engaging and her smile is attractive. Those are constants when it comes to Clarke. She’s learned to appreciate them. She hasn’t quite deciphered whether or not that’s supposed to make her feel as excited as she does around her. Lexa knows when she felt this last, and maybe that’s bad news.

But she struggles to look at Clarke making a joke about chopsticks and feel anything but happiness.

Lexa takes a box of food that Clarke slides towards her and laughs at her joke.

-

She’s cheating, and she almost feels bad about it.

They’re still on her couch. Clarke has her legs tucked underneath her and Lexa lets herself _relax_ a little. She leans back and smiles to herself. They’re watching Jeopardy, and it’s a recording that she’s already seen, but she only _almost_ feels bad about Clarke thinking she’s watching it for the first time, because Clarke is actually holding her own fantastically well for someone who spent the day at work and hasn’t had a screening of the correct answers.

Lexa clenches her jaw and feels her competitive side kick in when Clarke answers another question – or, _answer_ , that is – correctly. The contestant guesses correctly and chooses another category.

“ _Angry birds for $1200_.”

“ _Yeah, I'm the redheaded species of this bird. Oh, I damaged your lovely wooden home with my beak? Hmm, do I care? No_.”

Clarke lets out a soft laugh at the answer and Lexa takes her shot to answer. “What is the woodpecker?”

The contestant echoes her question and Clarke puts down her container, raising an eyebrow. It’s the answer that breaks her streak, and now she looks intense about winning. She sits up. “It’s on.”

“ _Poetic verbs for $800_.”

“ _I blank the body electric.”_

“What is sing?” Lexa spits out her question before Clarke can.

Clarke is _not_ happy.

“ _Inside for $1200_.”

“ _It's a long shot that if you return the Jack you will draw a seven to complete this hand_.”

Lexa remembers this one. “An inside straight.”

Clarke sits on the edge of the couch now, and Lexa can’t help but notice how attractive she looks when she gets competitive. She has the same look in her eyes that she used to when they raced as kids. It’s effect on Lexa is different now, to say the least.

Lexa blinks and turns her attention back to the television. She doesn’t catch the category, but it doesn’t matter, because when Trebek reads the answer, she recognizes it.

“ _Based on banana-hanging hooks, it was invented in 1936 to transport skiers at Sun Valley, Idaho_.”

Before she can say anything, Clarke has a hand over her mouth – it’s the last thing she expects, and she freezes in place until the contestant provides the answer – _the chairlift_ – and Clarke pulls her hand back like it’s nothing.

Lexa squints at her. “Not fair. I knew that answer, you know.”

“Well, I didn’t.”

“Not fair.” She repeats.

“So, maybe I like to play dirty.”

Lexa’s mouth goes dry, but she chooses not to acknowledge it.

“Two can play at that game, Clarke.”

“Bring it, _Lexa_.”

Trebek starts to read another answer – one Lexa doesn’t remember the question to, and she purses her lips. Clarke opens her mouth to speak, but she isn’t quick enough because Lexa’s unpracticed hands attack her side, trying to tickle her side. _Trying_ being the operative word, she doesn’t think she’s tickled anyone in years. It’s effective, nonetheless, because Clarke is a giggling wreck of a girl, folding over Lexa’s hands and swatting at her arms.

“Stop, stop, stop, oh my God, Lexa! You win, stop!”

Lexa lets her go when she’s hovering over Clarke, her knee pressed against Clarke’s thigh, and her hand resting on her side in a way it probably shouldn’t be, especially now that she’s not tickling her anymore. Lexa pulls back and Clarke pulls her shirt back down from where it had begun to ride up against her stomach.

“Jackass.” Clarke mutters around a smile.

Another contestant prompts another answer, but Lexa isn’t really listening. Before she can focus again, Clarke is already shoving an eggroll into Lexa’s mouth before she can provide the correct question. Lexa narrows her eyes and takes a bite from the eggroll while Clarke gives the right answer.

“You’re a child,” Lexa says around the rest of her eggroll. It’s horrible manners, but the way Clarke smiles makes her feel like she can’t do anything wrong right now.

-

The couch she wakes up on isn’t her own.

Lexa grips the fabric – it’s soft. Cushy. Not at all like her own leather couch. The room is warm and she’s covered in a blanket that she doesn’t remember getting.

“Morning.” Blonde hair and a cheery smile lean over the couch. “D’you want some coffee?”

Lexa blinks the sleep out of her eyes and sits up. Clarke’s apartment – of course. They had migrated towards her place when they ran out of wine to drink. The alcohol that Clarke kept around was much stronger than Lexa had expected.

“When did I fall asleep?”

“About the same time I did, I think. A few hours after I kicked your ass at monopoly.” Clarke stands up straight. She’s wearing a fluffy robe, unlike Lexa, who can still feel that she has her tight black jeans on. Four of the buttons on her shirt are undone. There are a lot of things wrong with this situation, and all of them have to do with the fact that she _never_ sleeps over.

She tries to gloss over it.

“That’s not how I remember that going.” Lexa sits up, pulling the blanket off her legs.

“Oh, really? Sorry, does your memory just leave out the part where I owned like, a hundred hotels on all my properties.”

“It was a board game, Clarke.” Lexa folds the blanket and stands up. “It’s childish to base self-worth off of trivial games.”

“Is it childish to base self-worth off of who can guess the most Jeopardy questions?”

Lexa purses her lips to fight off a smile and Clarke grins without shame. “Seriously, do you want some coffee?”

“In a minute.” She leans her head towards Clarke’s bathroom and gets a nod in response. Clarke shuffles back towards her kitchen – Lexa notes that she has a matching set of slippers to go with her robe – as Lexa makes her way to the bathroom. When she locks the door behind her, Lexa shuts her eyes and avoids looking in the mirror. She must be a mess. She feels like a mess.

What 23 year-old businesswoman does sleepovers? Her life is becoming too disorganized, too flexible.

Clarke did that.

-

Her back hits the edge of the kitchen counter and Clarke closes her eyes long enough to let herself react to everything. Everything being _waking up pressed against her childhood best friend._

She’s almost 100% confident that Lexa wasn’t awake, but _Clarke_ was awake. Awake and aware of a lot of things. Like the fact that Lexa had her arms wrapped around Clarke, like the fact that Lexa was warm and soft, like the fact that she hasn’t been held that way in a long time. Not since college.

And like the fact that she smelled like ridiculously expensive perfume – Lexa has an entire shelf of the stuff in her guest bathroom. Gifts from her Father. Gifts that would probably cost Clarke three and a half paychecks.

She shakes her head, clears it. Wanting affection, wanting intimacy – it’s a long way from wanting _Lexa_. She doesn’t need to go down that road. Besides, either Lexa doesn’t know that she’s a subconscious cuddler, or she just couldn’t care less. She’s blowing this out of proportion, if she’s being honest with herself.

She does have to admit, though – Lexa is a cute sleeper. She mumbles in her sleep, and she’s a lot less tense. She’s not at all like the Lexa that Clarke knows. More like the Lexa she might have known, had she not moved away so young. Clarke wonders what Lexa would have been like had she stayed. If she would be quite as tense today. If she would have closed herself off so much.

If she would have dated Costia. Clarke doesn’t know a lot about Costia – she just knows she was Lexa’s, and then one day she wasn’t. That’s all Lexa will give her, and only after several glasses of wine. That’s all she’s had the courage to ask about.

Clarke is four sips into her second cup of coffee and Lexa is still in the bathroom when Bellamy barges through her front door with his leather jacket in hand.

“It’s official, I need a threesome.” He declares, tossing his jacket onto the couch, making himself at home in the same spot that Lexa had slept in.

Clarke leaves her cup on the counter and laughs, joining him in the living room. “Sure hope that’s not an invitation, ‘cause I’m afraid I’ll have to pass. Any particular reason you need a threesome at 10 a.m.?”

“I was _disgusting_ last night.” He clenches his fists together for emphasis.

“Define disgusting.”

“I talked to a girl on the phone until 2 a.m. and we weren’t even talking about sex. We were talking about… _life_.” Bellamy says it like it’s a capital crime. Intimacy – it’s his biggest fear.

“That’s definitely not your style.”

“Damn right.”

“Who was the girl?”

Bellamy licks his lips, blinks at the floor, and it’s in that moment that Clarke knows exactly who the girl was.

“Nobody you know.”

Bullshit. She’s about to call him out on it when a toilet flush gets Bellamy’s attention and they both turn their attention to Lexa coming out of her guest bathroom, buttoning up the shirt that had come untucked after their second bottle of wine.

Bellamy raises an eyebrow and grins. “At least someone had a fun night. Sorry, ladies.” He stands, raising his hands in surrender. “Didn’t mean to interrupt.”

Lexa looks between the both of them and frowns. She’s only met Bellamy a handful of times, but Clarke knows Lexa well enough to know that she’s not comfortable with this situation. She looks a bit like a scared cat, freezing in place at the first sight of a stranger.

But Clarke? She thinks this is hilarious.

Bellamy is still grinning. “Care to share, Griffin?”

“I don’t know, Blake, maybe I will if you tell me who the girl was.”

Bellamy nods. “You know what? You deserve your privacy. You ladies have fun.”

Clarke rolls her eyes. She didn’t really think it would work. Bellamy is nothing if not predictable.

“By the way, I’m gonna be out of town for a while.” His voice drops a little, his expression offering Clarke nothing but sympathy. “O wants me to help out. You know, wedding stuff.”

Clarke gives him a curt nod. “Course. Have fun. Um, say hi to… Raven for me.” She almost says Octavia’s name, but that’s just. Ridiculous.

“Yeah. Will do.” Bellamy leans down to give her a kiss on the forehead and says his goodbyes to Clarke and then Lexa – who is still frozen in place. It takes her a few moments of silence to finally talk once Bellamy slips out the apartment door.

“What was that?”

“I think Bellamy thinks we slept together last night.” The second she says it, she’s reminded of just how weird her friends are. To think Bellamy is the normal one should probably scare her.

Lexa takes one look at the couch and frowns again. “We did.” Clarke’s stomach turns. So, she does remember. Or she made the logical assumption – one couch, two girls. Not a big leap. Either way, it’s not what she meant, and it takes Lexa another moment for that to sink in. “Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Why didn’t you correct him?”

Clarke wonders if Lexa always needs to be in control of every aspect of her life. No wonder she’s so tense. “He won’t spill his love life, I won’t spill mine.”

The frown doesn’t go away.

“Relax, I was just messing with him. He’ll figure it out.”

Lexa opens her mouth to say something else, but it’s cut off by a muffled knock. It’s too quiet to be at Clarke’s door, but it can’t be far away.

“Is that coming from my apartment?”

-

Her mind races to place the date – June 27th. No, that’s too early. She was supposed to come in tomorrow. Lexa curses under her breath, rushes to open Clarke’s front door, and makes a plan then and there to get the part of her life that Clarke Griffin has taken over under control. She’s getting too sloppy.

Just as she suspects, Lexa is greeted with the back of a suede jacket, just before the woman it belongs to turns around.

“Lexa!” She greets her with a smile and a hug – nothing like the treatment she would get from her father, had she continued to visit him. Her mother has always been the less clinical parent. “Did I get the wrong apartment?”

“No, you knocked on the correct door.” Lexa feels Clarke step up behind her. “I was just spending some time with - this is Clarke.” She gestures, albeit awkwardly, towards Clarke. Who is still in her robe. That doesn’t seem to phase her mother, though, because she looks like she’s just won the lottery.

Maybe Clarke Griffin’s effect on her runs in the family.

“You remember Clarke, Mom. Clarke Griffin.”

“Clarke Griffin,” It takes her a moment to place the name, and then: “Oh my God.” Her mother’s jaw drops and Clarke’s does too.

“You’re Lexa’s Mom.”

“Oh, honey, give me a hug.”

Lexa stands back as they hug it out like long lost sisters – she’s one part confused and two parts uncomfortable. Then again, her mother has always been more physical, more _human_ than she and her father.  And Clarke is… Clarke.

“Oh my God, you look amazing, Clarke. What has it been? Sixteen years?” She touches Clarke’s hair, her hands rubbing down the side of Clarke’s arms. Lexa feel almost protective, like her mother is staking a claim over something so absolutely _Lexa’s_. Which is ridiculous. Clarke isn’t property. But she’s done so well to separate her life from her family up to this point. She’s not the type to share.

Lexa is a lake, these shifts in her routines, her interests, her family – they’re ripples, and Clarke Griffin is one hell of an uncontrollable splash.

“Lexa, doesn’t she look amazing?” Her Mother looks at her, waiting for something. Lexa licks her lips so she doesn’t agree too quickly or say something she’ll regret. “Oh. _Oh_. Well, of course you think she looks amazing, you two are… oh.” She trails off and steps away from Clarke, clasping her hands together.

She’s smiling.

_Too much._

“Oh, Lexa, I’m so happy for you.”

Clarke looks at her with wide eyes and a wide smile, and Lexa thinks if her entire life wasn’t as haphazard as it is right now, she might understand what Clarke is trying to tell her.

“Listen, I know I said I was coming in tomorrow, but your… brother’s… girlfriend’s… _brother_ was flying out today, so I thought I’d come a little early, get to know her family. Now, you don’t have to fly out yet, I know you’re very busy with work and… Clarke.” She beams up at Lexa, gripping the side of her day old shirt and shaking her arm a little bit. “Oh, I’m so glad you found someone. You know, I’m not even upset that you didn’t tell me, I know how you like to be a _private person_.”

Lexa’s blood runs cold just as Clarke lets out a bark of a laugh that she barely manages to contain. It doesn’t phase her mother, nothing could ruin the cloud nine mood she’s launched herself into.

“Mom, no-“

“I know you prefer to do business over the phone either way, so since we can’t meet for brunch tomorrow, I’ll call you later today while we’re waiting in the hotel. Our flight doesn’t leave until later tonight. So we can talk flights and schedules and…” She glances at Clarke and clasps her hands back together. She’s dripping excitement, and she won’t let Lexa get a word in edgewise. “Plus-ones. And you can tell me all about your new girlfriend.”

She lands a kiss on Lexa’s cheek and gives Clarke a wave before she’s out the door with a throwaway, “Love you, dear.”

That’s twice. In a single hour. In a less than ten minutes. She doesn’t even think they’ve been awake for a full twenty minutes. When Clarke shuts the door in front of them with a soft laugh, Lexa takes a deep breath.

“I guess that makes me the new girlfriend.”

She should have slept in a little longer.

Lexa rubs her temples, leaning against the closed door. “Is there something about us that advertises _girlfriend material_? Specifically today, this morning?”

“Hmm…” Clarke joins Lexa at her side. “Our sleeping arrangements, I guess.”

She’s being far too sloppy. This is where sloppy gets people. This is where sloppy people end up.

“Relax, and I know you haven’t relaxed since you were in the womb, but _relax_. She said she’d call later, just explain it then.”

“And will you be explaining it to Bellamy?”

“Yeah, probably. He’s flying out of town, like he said, but when he gets back we’ll have to tell him. I mean, it’s not like you’re going anywhere, right? He’s gonna see us hanging out as friends.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

Clarke waits for a beat before asking. “Right about what?”

Lexa turns her head to look down at her, and she doesn’t bother to fight the smile on her face, irresponsible as it is. “I’m not going anywhere.”

-

Lexa’s mother isn’t anything close to the definition of punctual, and Clarke has to guess that Lexa got all of her uptight qualities from her father, because Lexa sighs once for every twenty minutes that her mother doesn’t call her. Twenty minutes. On the dot. Every time.

Clarke moves around Lexa’s apartment quietly – she still doesn’t feel totally comfortable around Lexa’s things. Everything feels so clinical. Polished. But she was invited in, and that means that Lexa hasn’t really felt the effects of spending almost a full day with Clarke. That’s good. Lexa likes her company just as much as Clarke likes Lexa’s.

They used to spend days together as kids, but there’s a strangeness to it now, like an expectation. Like they need reasons and excuses to see each other – Lexa had offered her another before she invited her over. What if her Mother didn’t believe her? She might assume that Lexa was lying to keep her private life private.

Clarke is back-up.

She doesn’t feel like just back-up. She can see right through Lexa Woods. Clarke thinks she craves social interaction just as much as she insists that she’s better off without it.

Lexa sighs again from the dining room where she sits by the phone, going through her mail. Clarke wanders into the living room, her fingers gracing the pieces of Lexa’s marble chess set. Another gift from her father. She taps the head of the black knight and for the first time in years, she smiles when she remembers Wells.

He would have hated Lexa. Lexa is everything Wells isn’t.

Wasn’t.

They would have argued over everything. Lexa’s too stubborn to let anything go, and Wells was too smart to back down from any fight he knew he could win. She thinks the only thing they might have agreed on is her.

When Lexa’s mother finally calls, Lexa has the phone answered and on speaker within half a ring. She sets the phone down as her mother talks, still sorting through her pile of mail. Clarke sits down in the chair next to her. Her dining room table is small, square, and nowhere near implying that it was made for more than four people. Clarke looks at the flawless finish and thinks maybe this is the first time anyone else has sat at it since she bought it.

“ _He is really, really a lovely boy, Lexa. He is quite the charmer, let me tell you, this boy would even charm the pants off your father._ ”

Lexa’s eyes widen and she shakes her head at the mail she’s reading like that couldn’t be further from the truth. She definitely gets her uptight side from her father, then.

Clarke pulls a newspaper from what she assumes is Lexa’s trash pile and starts to doodle a caricature on it. Lexa in the clothes that she’s wearing – a dark blue sweater and a pair of black jeans, her hair pulled into a bun. She remembers seeing the disposable contacts on the shelf of Lexa’s bathroom, so she adds a pair of bulky glasses to the doodle.

Lexa rolls her eyes.

“ _We went to this really nice restaurant, oh gosh I can’t place the name of it, it was some steakhouse or a, or a, or a country place or something, and I had this amazing plate of ribs-_ “

Clarke’s starting to understand why Lexa put her mother on speakerphone. She adds a few stick figure versions of Lexa’s mother to her doodle, all of them talking at once. Lexa smiles behind the hand she’s pulled to her face to hold back her laugh. Clarke adds another caricature – one of herself, asleep on the dining room table next to Lexa.

“ _He told the_ funniest _joke, I mean you had to be there because there’s absolutely no way I can accurately describe what our waitress was doing all night, it was completely outrageous._ ”

Lexa picks up Clarke’s pen and adds a few ‘Z’s over both of their heads.

“ _I know I said I had reservations about your brother’s girlfriend, she’s… a little intense. But she comes from a good background I think. I really do like this Bellamy boy, he sounds like a terrific brother and he really does love Octavia. I wish you and Lincoln had a relationship like that.”_

Clarke freezes – totally and completely. Her fingers are stone, gripping the pen in her hand and pressing down against the paper like her life depends on it. She feels numb.

She feels _stupid_.

Lincoln. Bellamy. Octavia. _Lexa_.

She’d never made the connection when she had met Lincoln in college – why would she? He never talked much about his stepsister. 

Lexa’s brother is getting married, she knew that much. Octavia is getting married. Bellamy is flying out of town tonight. Lexa’s brother’s girlfriend’s brother is flying out of town tonight. 

Lincoln. Bellamy. Octavia. Lexa. _Fuck_.

“ _I can’t wait for you to meet him, Lexa. And the whole family, really, you still haven’t met this girlfriend of his._ ” For the first time since she’s answered the phone, Lexa opens her mouth to speak, but she’s cut off. “ _And I know, I know, you’re always so busy. But this is your brother’s wedding, I don’t want you missing it, you hear me? You can even bring Clarke, if you like._ ” Clarke can picture the grin on her mother’s face – she had thought it was precious when they had met earlier. Now she just feels guilty. Guilty because it’s a lie. Guilty because that’s how she always feels about any association to Octavia Blake.

And guilty because she’s about to do something really stupid.

Clarke doesn’t think about it, just shoots a hand out to grab Lexa’s wrist, stealing her attention from the phone in front of them. Her eyes are wide and Clarke shakes her head.

She glances at the phone and as an afterthought, covers the receiver. “Don’t tell her we’re not dating.”

“What?” Lexa’s whisper is harsh and confused. She raises an eyebrow as her mother continues to talk about wedding arrangements.

“Please, just… Trust me for two minutes.”

Lexa hesitates, drumming her fingers against the countertop twice before pulling Clarke’s hand off the receiver. “Mom.” She rolls her eyes while her mother continues to talk. “Mom. _Mom_.”

“ _What is it, sweetheart?_ ”

“I’m sorry, I’m going to have to call you back, something just came up.”

“ _Well, our plane leaves in two hours, you won’t have much time._ ”

“Then I’ll call you in the morning.”

“ _… Alright. Is everything okay?_ ”

“I’m fine. Goodbye.”

Lexa taps the touchscreen of her phone to end the call. Her eyes snap up towards Clarke. “Care to tell me why we’re lying to my mother?”

-

Lexa returns from the kitchen with two glasses and a bottle of wine.

“I have some clarifying questions, if you don’t mind.”

Clarke looks drained, which makes sense, since she did just vaguely spill her life story. _Vaguely_ being the operative word. “Ask anything.”

“My brother’s girlfriend is your college roommate?”

“Yeah, that’s Octavia.”

“She’s the one who won’t talk to you?”

“I haven’t seen her in years.”

“Why not?”

Clarke eyes the bottle of wine on the coffee table and reaches for it, pouring a healthy amount into her glass. “It’s… kind of a complicated story. But that’s – that’s not what’s important. I just. Octavia and I always said we’d be there for each other. Growing up. Getting married, having kids. I want a chance to make it right, you know?”

She doesn’t. Not really. Lexa isn’t the type to forgive.

“Before it’s too late. Before those moments come and go.”

Lexa purses her lips. “Tell me something that makes it worth it.”

Clarke takes a sip from her glass, staring at the empty part of the wall across from their seats on the couch. “I’ve had three best friends in my life. You were my first.” Clarke’s smile is soft and genuine, the type of smile that always works its way into Lexa’s mind late at night, when she can’t afford it to. “And I got you back. My–" She shakes her head, and if it were anyone else, Lexa might be afraid she’d cry. But Clarke won’t cry, she’s learned that much about her. She refuses to cry in front of people. She won’t even let her voice crack.

“When I was fifteen, I had a best friend. His name was Wells.” Clarke smiles at the memory. “I can’t get him back. And maybe getting you back is making me selfish, who knows. But I just… I want her back.”

Lexa narrows her eyes. “Clarke. To be clear here. What you had with Octavia was… _friendship_.”

“Of course it was – oh my God, _no_.” She laughs, shaking her head. “No, we were just friends. Don’t worry.”

“Good.” Lexa is more than a little grateful when she finds the source of that concern – Lincoln, of course. “This is my brother’s wedding you’ll be crashing, so I needed to know.”

“Hey, not crashing. Just… attending. As your girlfriend. Which, by the way, would be a really bad way to win back an ex-girlfriend, so. No worries there.”

“Fair point.”

Clarke stands up, collecting her empty wine glass and the bottle as she walks backwards towards the kitchen. “So, c’mon. What do you say? I promise I’ll be a great girlfriend.” She bites her lip playfully and swings the bottle of wine.

Lexa sighs before following her. Clarke is in _her_ apartment, but somehow she still manages to control every situation. She hasn’t gotten used to that yet. She’s not sure if she should. Getting used to Clarke sounds too much like co-dependence.

“I still don’t see what I get out of this.”

“You’ll have company.” Clarke sets the glass and bottle on the kitchen counter and starts to raid through her refrigerator for something. “How long is this trip supposed to be anyway?”

“My mother asked me to take three weeks off for it.”

“Three weeks? Damn.” Clarke pokes her head out from the fridge, coming up empty. “Well, that’s three weeks you won’t have to spend alone with your family. And you _know_ I’m great company. You love hanging out with me.”

She’s not wrong. Lexa crosses her arms and leans back against a countertop. “It certainly sounds more appealing than the alternative.”

“Right?”

She locks her jaw and purses her lips, staring at the floor. “Alright. I’ll allow it.”

“Thank you!” Lexa barely has time to brace herself before Clarke is launching herself into a hug. Her chin tucks itself into the crook of Lexa’s neck and her arms wrap around her waist. If she was thinking straight, she wouldn’t let her hands come up to rub Clarke’s back. But she’s not thinking straight and that’s exactly what she does. Clarke hums absentmindedly into the hug, sinking further into the embrace.

“This means a lot, Lexa.”

“I hope you were right.”

Clarke pulls back. Lexa tries not to count her freckles.

“Right about what?”

“Being a great girlfriend.”

Clarke grins. “Oh, I’m the best girlfriend there is. You’ll see.”

Lexa nods and tries not to think about how she wouldn’t know, how she has almost nothing to compare relationships to. She’s had a no dating policy in place since she was nineteen. At least that’s one thing Clarke hasn’t changed. It’s not technically breaking her rule if their relationship is fabricated.

Right?


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The one where Lexa and Clarke have too much thirst and too little self control.

She shows up at Lexa’s door on a Tuesday with more than a dozen slips of paper in her pockets and a box of pizza in her hand.

“I brought lunch. Pizza.”

Lexa furrows her eyebrows. “I don’t eat pizza.”

“Do I still get girlfriend privileges to override that if our entire relationship is a sham?” She asks, pushing her way into Lexa’s apartment.

“I don’t think it works that way.”

“Too bad.” Clarke sets the pizza box on the coffee table and shrugs. “So,” she says, pulling a folded piece of yellow paper from her back pocket. “I watched like, a hundred girlfriend tag videos on YouTube this morning. Long story short, I have a list of all the basic questions we should be able to answer about each other… _And_ I’m about as romantically frustrated as it gets. Take my word on this and never spend more than twenty minutes watching happy couples talk about love. It’s brutal.”

Lexa’s lips quirk up just slightly. “Don’t worry, that’s not how I usually spend my free time.”

“I guess that makes you the smart one.” Clarke says as she strips off her jacket and takes a seat on the couch. “You wanna get started?”

“My things are in another room, just give me a moment.” Lexa disappears into her bedroom and Clarke starts to sort through the papers in her pockets. She wrote down a lot of questions as she thought of them. They had agreed to come up with separate lists of questions they would need to know the answers to. Questions about each other, questions about their relationship, questions that Lexa’s family might ask.

Lexa comes back with a packet in her hand. It’s neat. Stapled. Typed. She doesn’t know what else she was expecting from Lexa. She eyes the printed pages in her hand and the feeling is similar to showing up massively underdressed to a formal occasion.

“Oh. You typed yours.”

“I type everything.”

“I still haven’t gotten my printer set up so I just wrote down every question I thought of on the post it-notes,” She points to the scattered slips of paper. “And this is all the girlfriend tag questions.” She holds up a sheet of legal pad paper. “I left out all the sexual ones, though, ‘cause I doubt anyone in your family is going to ask us who tops.”

Actually, on second thought – if she does fix things with Octavia, she wouldn’t put it past her to ask a question like that. She wouldn’t put it past Raven, either.

Clarke opens the pizza box and pulls out a slice, balancing pizza in her left hand and trying to clear enough space on the table for Lexa’s notes with her right hand. “Besides, look at us. Nobody would even have to ask.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, it’s obvious.” She wants to eat her pizza, she does, but she can sense this is going to turn into a debate. She can’t resist debates with Lexa.

“And how is it obvious?” Lexa narrows her eyes. Clarke sets down her pizza. Definitely a debate.

“It’s me.”

“And how are you so sure of that?”

Clarke grins, wipes the pizza grease off her hands on to a napkin, and leans back against the couch. “I know me. Here, hold my hand.” She holds out the her right hand.

Lexa hesitates before she reaches out and takes her hand. Her hand is warm, gentle. Her skin is softer than she had expected. Clarke laces their fingers together and squeezes her hand.

“See? My thumb is over yours. That happened naturally.”

“That doesn’t mean anything, you already knew you were testing me. It’s not a fair test if I don’t know that I’m taking it.”

“How would I have cheated?”

“You took the lead–“ She stops, realizing what she’s saying. Lexa pulls her hand back and folds it in her lap. “That doesn’t mean anything.”

“Whatever you say.” Clarke doesn’t let the smile fall from her face.

“I’m not going to argue with you about this.” Lexa says, as if she hadn’t been the one to argue about it in the first place.

“Good. We have more important things to discuss anyway.” She collects a few of the post-it notes and drops them in her lap. “I’ll go first.”

–

Three slices of pizza later, they aren’t even halfway done with their lists. Lexa can feel her stomach turn as they continue to rifle through each other’s questions. She’s made a number of million-dollar business transactions in her life, but this arrangement with Clarke is by far the most nerve-wracking one she’s ever been a part of.

Clarke turns over one of her post-it notes. “Oh, I wrote something on the back of this. It’s a really good one. Don’t look, what color are my eyes?”

Clarke’s questions are too easy. “Blue.”

“Good, good. Yours are green. Hold on, there’s…” She squints at her own handwriting, typical. Lexa almost mentions that if Clarke can’t read her own handwriting, then no one can. Then again, Clarke wanted to be a doctor. Her messy scribbles fit her. “What eye color do you _wish_ I had?”

Lexa frowns. “Why would I want you to have a different eye color?”

Clarke shrugs and crumples up the post-it note, adding it to the finished pile. “I don’t know. Maybe you think I’d look prettier with green eyes.”

“Your eyes are fine as they are.”

“Okay, what’s one of the questions on yours?”

They’d gone through most of Lexa’s already, as evidenced by the list of crossed out questions. The entire first page is crossed out, and that had mostly been story building. Clarke was quick to fabricate a good story for them.

They had met when Clarke had moved in. In a heroic act of kindness, Lexa had helped her move in. They realized they were long lost best friends, and the connection was instant. Lexa kissed her first – just outside Clarke’s apartment, but Clarke asked her out first. Their anniversary is May 24th, they spend most of their time at Clarke’s apartment because it’s “homey”, and they’ve been toying with the idea of moving in together. Simple enough to remember.

“Which side of the bed do you sleep on?”

Clarke _laughs_ at her. “Who would ask us that?”

“It’s a practical question, we need to know these things to get a feel for the dynamic of our relationship.”

She gives in with a shrug. “I sleep on the right side of the bed.”

“That’s good. I sleep on the left.”

“Wait,” Clarke taps the eraser of her pencil against the paper she’s been taking notes on. “So if we’re sleeping in the same bed, we’re having sex. When did we start?”

She presses her lips together, doing the math. “At the appropriate time, after a few dates. Once we had time to form a connection, we acted on our feelings.”

“Good to know.” Clarke scribbles something on her piece of paper.

“What are you writing?”

“I’m writing that I’m fantastic in bed.” She says with a smile.

“You were waiting for the perfect opportunity to write that, weren’t you?”

Clarke just grins, adding a few exclamation points next to the bullet point she wrote.

“I hope you’re proud of yourself.”

“Oh, I am.”

–

They reach the end of both of their lists of questions after an hour and a half. Clarke would be lying if she said she hadn’t taken the opportunity to learn as much as she could about Lexa.

She likes dogs, but she doesn’t want to look after one. She likes kids, but she claims that they exhaust her. She has an Uncle named Gustus. She never misses an episode of The Good Wife, and the fact that she’s seen every season of Survivor is the guiltiest pleasure she’s willing to own up to. And interestingly enough, she knows way more about Clarke than she ever really expected her to. Lexa is freakishly observant of her. She knows her favorite cereal, her favorite takeout place, her favorite TV show. She knows the only sports team she cares about is the Packers, and she knows that she didn’t have chocolate cake for the first time until she was 13, which Clarke can’t even remember telling her about. But she remembered.

Somehow, The Good Wife and Uncle Gustus don’t really compare.

“Okay, I have one more question.” Clarke says as Lexa walks around the coffee table, trash can in hand, collecting the used slips of paper around them. If she knows her, which she _does_ , she knows they’ll all be recycled later.

Lexa takes recycling very seriously.

“Go ahead.”

“Tattoos.”

Lexa tenses for half a moment before she bends down to pick up the last few crumpled pieces of paper. “That’s not really a question.”

“Do you have any? I have one here.” She pulls down her shirt to reveal a collarbone piece – a constellation of sorts. Three scattered stars, connected by a series of dots. Except they aren’t stars. One is a raven, one is an intricately drawn Scorpion, and one is a handwritten note that she had tattooed. It reads “Love, O.” Lexa doesn’t ask, but if she did, Clarke might tell her how she got her tattoo. She might tell her that there are two other girls out there with their own variation of this exact tattoo on their skin.

“Is this a question for our arrangement or for you?”

She thinks about it. Honestly, she’s just curious. “Bit of both, I guess.”

“I have two. I’ll be getting a third next month, I think.” She sets the trash can down and touches the skin on the underside of her forearm. “Here.” She hesitates before she continues. “I have one on my upper arm.” She touches the sleeve of her right arm. She isn’t wearing one of her lighter shirts, in fact it’s black, so Clarke can’t see anything, not even an outline. “And a piece on my back, but it’s not complete.” She’s starting to see why Lexa wears so much black.

“Can I see?”

Lexa touches the collar of her shirt. “I’d have to take off my shirt.”

“You don’t have to, if you don’t want to, it’s fine. But, you know, nothing I haven’t seen before, right?” That seems to startle her a little, so Clarke backtracks. “No, I mean – not that I’ve seen _you_ before, it’s just. I work at a hospital. I went to Med school. I’ve seen more of the human body than most people see in their entire lives.”

Lexa nods. “Right.” She swallows, looks away, and starts to unbutton her shirt from the top down.

The first thing Clarke realizes when Lexa drops her shirt on the couch is that she hasn’t gotten laid in a really long time. Too long. It’s been far too long, because she’s supposed to be interested in Lexa’s tattoos right now, but in reality she’s just sort of staring. Staring at Lexa’s stomach. Staring at Lexa’s bra. She’s just sort of staring and for half a second Clarke forgets what they’re even doing right now.

It’s definitely been too long. As a general rule of thumb, when you start to drool over your own friends, it’s probably been too long. She mentally picks her jaw up from the floor and snaps her eyes up to Lexa’s face. She seems confident enough in her own body, but unsure about being so exposed. Fair enough, Clarke did momentarily objectify her. Which is bad. Very bad. Just a bad thing to do, and she promises to never do it again before her eyes wander to Lexa’s arm. She stands from the couch so that she can take a look at her upper arm.

“Wow, that’s… that’s really good.” It’s one of the most intricate pieces she’s ever seen, even if that doesn’t mean very much. She hasn’t looked into many tattoos before. She got her own on a drunken impulse. But Lexa doesn’t seem like the type to make rash decisions. Clarke remembers being in high school and her Mother telling her and Raven to only get a tattoo after wanting it for two years, just to be sure. Neither of them listened to that, of course, but Clarke thinks that’s the kind of advice Lexa would take very seriously.

“It was designed by the best artist in the state.”

“Art is subjective.” She counters, “How are you sure they were the best?”

“I settle for nothing less.” Lexa turns around, pulling her hair towards the front to showcase the piece on her back. She has six symbols down her spine, symbols that Clarke doesn’t recognize. Celtic, maybe? That’s the only kind of symbol she knows the name of, but she’s also pretty sure that Celtic symbols are the ones with all the crosses and spirals, so maybe not. To the right and left of these symbols, thick curling black lines provide a border in the shape of flames.

“It’s not finished yet, like I said.”

“It looks amazing.” Her hand comes up to trace the lines before she can really think about it, but she pulls back. “Can I touch?”

Lexa turns her head to look at her and then nods slowly.

Where she touches, Lexa stiffens. Her skin is flawless but her muscles are tense. Clarke traces the thick black lines with her fingertips.

She’s trying really hard not to stare. Not like _that_ , anyway. She can stare of course, as an artist. Only a skilled artist could have created a piece like the one on Lexa’s arm, and she can admire that kind of art.

The tattoo itself is the masterpiece, not the girl, she reminds herself.

“Are you quite done, Clarke?” Lexa asks with a touch of humor in her tone of voice. Maybe she hasn’t been as subtle as she thinks.

She nods and steps back, letting herself fall back onto the couch again while Lexa pulls her shirt back on. She doesn’t watch.

“Are you free for the rest of the day or do you have plans?” Lexa looks down at her as she buttons up her shirt.

“No plans for me.”

“Do you want to watch something? I found a few documentaries on Netflix that would go well together.” She picks up her remote control and turns on the television, flipping through a few Netflix categories to the documentary section.

Clarke groans. “Another one? You realize they’re all the exact same thing, right?”

“How so?”

She deepens her voice and frowns. “In a world plagued by danger,” She starts, trying to fit her voice to a British accent, “Mankind must struggle to survive. Mankind must face countless hardships. Mankind must conquer. Mankind must produce three hour long documentaries about that one guy who did that one thing in Greece 400 years ago.”

Lexa sits down and purses her lips. “Mockery is not the product of a strong mind, Clarke.”

“And an obsession with documentaries is?”

She offers her a half smile. “At least I can follow the history of it all.”

Clarke narrows her eyes. _What the hell does that even mean?_ “Oh, I can follow _the history of it all_ just fine.”

“Is that why you fell asleep before we could get to the Mesopotamia episode?”

“I didn’t fall asleep.”

Lexa raises an eyebrow and she knows she’s screwed. “I distinctly remember your head in my lap. I even gave you a blanket. All you were missing was your Avatar pajamas.”

Oh. True. Not just the pajamas part, even though she’s kind of right about those too – her Korra pajamas are her favorite, even if it’s only a t-shirt. The pants just match. Whatever. She’s kind of right about the whole falling asleep thing, too.

“Oh. Yeah. You were stroking my hair, weren’t you?”

Lexa _almost_ blushes, and that’s _almost_ satisfying. “I might have been. It was a boring movie,” She explains.

“You’re right.” Clarke nods. “ _It was a documentary._ ”

Lexa rolls her eyes, but she doesn’t give up. “Will you watch it if I claim to have false girlfriend privileges?”

“I thought that’s not the way it worked.”

“I changed my mind.” She hits play and the History channel logo that has started to haunt Clarke’s dreams flashes across the television screen.

“You might regret that later.”

Lexa sighs. “Clarke? Watch the film.”

–

The film is horrible, as usual. Clarke zones out before she can really zone in, but Lexa seems to really enjoy it, so she nods and smiles every once in a while. And she listens when Lexa pauses to explain a missing piece of the historical puzzle. Which is often. She likes the way Lexa lights up when she talks about something she really loves. She wonders, sometimes, what it would be like for someone to light up like that when they talk about her.

She spends most of her time on Lexa’s couch trapped in her own thoughts.

She’s been thinking about Octavia more and more lately. About how she’ll react to seeing her. Clarke has had the exact same conversation with Octavia in her mind easily a hundred times. Maybe more. But there’s no way to guarantee Octavia will follow her script. She used to know her well enough to finish her sentences. Now she doesn’t even know what Octavia could possibly say to her, if she’s even willing to talk to her.

It’s been years. That much time changes a person. It’s certainly changed her.

When she shuts the door of her own apartment behind her, Clarke’s feet carry her into her bedroom, and then her closet. She sighs, steels her jaw, and reaches for the red backpack on the highest shelf. She gets a good enough grip on one of the straps and pulls, and when it crashes into her chest, she decides that Bellamy Blake is an asshole. Because he _knows_ what’s in this backpack and he _knows_ she’s barely tall enough to reach it.

She sits, pushing her clothes aside so that there’s room to lean against the back wall of the closet. Clarke unzips the backpack and turns it upside down. Papers come pouring out. Letters and photographs and a number of otherwise insignificant things that actually mean the world to her. She has to pull out the shoebox herself – it gets stuck on the zipper – and she places it in front of her. In block letters, the words “Sentimental Shit” are written in black marker. It’s Bellamy’s handwriting, not hers.

She pushes it open and sifts through the various cards and photographs. This used to be all she kept of them, a shoebox. But the piles started to grow as she sorted through her things, and she ran out of room. That’s when the backpack came into play. But the shoebox had everything important. Everything she knew she’d want one day. Everything to do with Raven and Octavia.

And Finn.

And every memory she made throughout high school and college.

She finds a familiar photo tucked into the side of the cardboard box and turns it over in her hands. Clarke smiles, but she can feel the tightening in her chest. It’s her, on the couch in her freshman dorm, wearing a pair of reindeer antlers. Finn and Octavia have Santa Claus hats on, and Raven is trying to reenact some kind of Playboy pose on top of the couch. Bellamy sits on the floor in front of the couch, and his head is barely in the photo. The photo is blurry, but the paper itself is worn down, too. She knows why. She knows it’s her favorite picture of them. She knows it’s the happiest memory she ever caught on camera.

And she remembers every second of it.

**5 Years Ago.**

_Finn insists on playing the same Frank Sinatra record all night. He was almost a Christmas baby, so his birthday had only come three days ago. His Dad got him a record player, and on the first day, it was cute how much he wanted to use it. By now, Clarke had heard the same version of  “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” about thirty times more than any one person should have to hear in their entire life._

_Bellamy is the first one to suggest an intervention. Raven takes the first step._

_“Finn.” She says, sitting down to the left of him on the couch. Clarke leans forward from her spot to his right to see Raven pat his knee. “It has to end.”_

_“Aw, c’mon–“_

_‘Ah ah ah.” Raven raises her hand to cut him off. She’s about three glasses of eggnog in, and it’s starting to show. “If you don’t stop the Frank Sinatra, Octavia’s gonna go into really excruciating detail about the explicit kind of things she would be doing to Lincoln right now if we weren’t all snowed into this shithole of a college dorm. Right Octavia?”_

_Octavia tosses back another glass of eggnog from the side of their Christmas tree. It’s a sad tree, barely as tall as Raven and missing probably half its branches. Not that they care. It’s theirs, and Clarke named it Jeffrey. Octavia nods. “Absolutely. I already have something juicy in mind, I promise.”_

_Bellamy cringes from inside their kitchen and sticks his head through the doorway. “For the love of God, if you care about me at all, turn the damn record player off.”_

_Finn looks like his life might end if Octavia says anything more, and it just might. Outside of the four of them, Bellamy is his best friend. Octavia is practically his adopted little sister. “You know what, you’re right.” He takes his arm back from around Clarke’s shoulder and stands up. “Frankie’s getting a little old.”_

_Bellamy cheers when he stops the record and Raven wraps Bellamy in a dramatic hug. “You’re amazing, you know that?”_

_Bellamy laughs and goes back to cooking in the kitchen. He’d promised everyone cookies, God bless his soul._

_That’s pretty much all the night has been. Laughing and cheering and eggnog and Bellamy trying to make cookies and Frank Sinatra. Finn is the only truly sober one. Even Bellamy has had his fair share of Eggnog, and Clarke can feel herself getting a little tipsy._

_Finn reaches for her hand and nods towards the doorway to the kitchen. “Hey, come here.”_

_“What?”_

_“Just come here.” He grins and pulls her from the couch._

_Okay. She’s definitely getting a little tipsy, because the room shouldn’t be spinning quite that much. The room probably shouldn’t be spinning at all, if physics is still a thing. “What is it?”_

_He keeps smiling, so she does too. Finn’s smile is infectious. He backs them up into the doorway and looks up. She doesn’t get the hint, obviously, because he tips her chin up to see it._

_Mistletoe. Oh._

_Clarke laughs while Finn hooks a finger through one of her belt loops, pulling her closer. “Well look at that,” She says. “Mistletoe.”_

_“Yeah, how ‘bout it? Wonder how that got there.”_

_“Who knows?” She says, leaning in to kiss him. He smiles against her lips and she’s in love._

_It only takes about ten seconds of kissing for Octavia and Raven to start complaining. Bellamy isn’t far behind._

_“Come on, guys, we’re gonna do a duet of ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside’. You’re killin’ our vibe.”_

_“You should feel privileged to be a part of this, our voices are angelic.”_

_“Yes, please. Some of us are trying to cook here?”_

_They pull back and Clarke rests her head against Finn’s forehead._

_And apparently they were serious about the duet._

_Octavia tugs them apart and sets them down on the couch before clearing her throat. “I really can’t stay.”_

_Raven throws her arm around Octavia’s shoulders. “But baby, it’s cold outside.”_

_“I’ve gotta go away.”_

_“But baby, it’s cold outside.”_

_“This evening has been–“_

_“Been hopin’ that you’d drop in–“_

_“So very nice.”_

_“I’ll hold your hands, they’re just like ice.”_

_By the time they get to the first “Oh, but it’s cold outside”, everyone is clutching their sides, laughing until they can’t breathe. Clarke falls into Finn’s side and laughs into his shoulder while Octavia and Raven give up and crash into the couch beside them. They laugh until they cry, and then Raven tries to finish the duet singlehandedly and they laugh some more._

_“Wait, wait, wait,” Raven scrambles off of the couch to grab her camera. It’s a cheap one, and she bought it mostly with the intent to document experiments in her labs. But, they use it almost on a daily basis. “We’ve gotta take a picture before we get too drunk to remember what happened tonight.”_

_Octavia reaches over the coffee table to put on her Santa Claus hat and Clarke adjusts her Rudolph gear. “I’m good to go. Bellamy, get your ass out of the kitchen.”_

_Bellamy listens to his sister and dives into the living room. Quite literally, too. He slides to a stop at the foot of the couch and rubs his elbow to ease the pain of the rugburn._

_“Dumbass.” Octavia comments._

_Finn puts his arm around Clarke again and says, “We’re ready whenever you are.”_

_“Just a sec, just sec.” Raven fiddles with the settings on her camera and then hangs it on a branch of their Christmas tree. “We’ve got fifteen seconds.”_

_That’s all the warning they get before Raven steps between the couch cushions and starts to climb it. “Hey, assholes, work with me here, I’m trying to look sexy.” She lays down, props her leg up against the wall and gives the camera a smoldering look._

_Finn laughs. “Everybody say ‘finals’.”_

_“Finals can suck my ass,” Octavia gets out before the camera flashes and their picture is taken._

_It was Christmas and nobody was home for the holidays because of a blizzard, but home didn’t mean family. Not for any of them. This is family._

_Or it was._

Clarke clutches the photograph in her hand for a few more minutes before she starts to pack everything back into the backpack. She sets the picture to the side and closes the shoebox, shoving it back into her bag. She drags her fingers along the carpet, pulling every card, every photo, every letter, every gift into a pile and then unceremoniously packing everything back into her backpack. She wipes the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand and hugs her knees to her chest. Her forehead rests against the frayed holes in the knees of her jeans. She takes a few deep breaths and calms herself down.

She didn’t really think that she would have that kind of reaction, but honestly, what had she expected? She hadn’t looked at that photo in a year. After so many months of staring at it every day, she’d packed it into a shoebox and tried to forget.

She moves the backpack out of the way and stares at the photo, turned over on the carpet. On the back, Octavia had written in her delicate handwriting, “You, me, and Raven against the world, right? Love, O. Study hard.” Above it, Finn had scribbled his name with an arrow pointing to the space after “me”. Below it, Bellamy had added “and bellamy (the coolest guy ever)”.

Clarke laughs, and it’s the first time she finds herself able to when she looks at this picture. It’s not a bitter laugh. It’s a good one. It’s a hopeful one.

–

**One Week Later**

**Clarke G. (3:12pm):** yo.

 **Clarke G. (3:12pm):** quick q. is your family the conservative type at all?

 **Lexa (3:13pm):**  What do you mean?

 **Clarke G. (3:13pm):** are you out to your whole family or is there anyone who we shouldn’t tell we’re “dating”

 **Lexa (3:13pm):** It’ll only be my mother and Lincoln’s family. Don’t worry about that.

 **Clarke G. (3:14pm):** cool cool

 **Clarke G. (3:19pm):** have you ever gone skinny dipping?

 **Lexa (3:28pm):** What?

 **Clarke G. (3:28pm):** it’s the little stuff we’ve gotta know about each other.

 **Lexa (3:29pm):** Nobody is going to ask you if I’ve ever gone skinny dipping.

 **Clarke G. (3:30pm):** yeah but now im curious :)

 **Lexa (3:36pm):** Yes.

 **Clarke G. (3:37pm):** knew it.

 **Clarke G. (3:37pm):** what about streaking?

 **Lexa (3:38pm):** No.

 **Lexa (3:40pm):** Have you?

 **Clarke G. (3:40pm):** once or twice in college

 **Clarke G. (3:41pm):** okay your turn you have to ask some questions

 **Lexa (3:42pm):** I wasn’t aware we were playing twenty questions.

 **Clarke G. (3:44pm):** i’m bored. indulge me.

 **Lexa (3:50pm):** Have you ever read an entire book in one night?

 **Clarke G. (3:51pm):** you’re a killjoy, you know that? i’m yawning.

 **Lexa (3:55pm):** Fine. Don’t answer. Are you almost ready to go?

 **Clarke G. (3:55pm):** yeah, i’ve had my bags packed since last night. it’s kind of exciting, been a while since i took a vacation

 **Lexa (3:57pm):** Are you sure you can afford to take time off from your job?

 **Clarke G. (3:57pm):** yeah its fine. my mom got me the job so i don’t think i have to worry about kane firing me. he said i could take a few weeks off

 **Lexa (4:00pm):** Good.

 **Clarke G. (4:01pm):** you’re totally looking forward to this aren’t you?

 **Lexa (4:04pm):** More than I was before I knew that I had company, yes.

 **Clarke G. (4:05pm):** :)

 **Clarke G. (4:10pm):** what time is our flight?

 **Lexa (4:10pm):** 8:00 p.m. We should leave soon.

 **Clarke G. (4:18pm):** pick me up at 5? we should get there early anyway

 **Lexa (4:18pm):** I agree.

–

They do get their early.

Lexa drives and Clarke makes her regret the comment about _girlfriend privileges_ by taking control of the radio and exclusively playing nothing but boyband music.

Lexa barely makes it through the Jonas Brothers playlist.

By 6:40 p.m. they’ve already made it through the luggage check and gone through security. And now they’re here, Lexa tapping her foot softly against the tiled floor, Clarke searching through her iPod for a song that she’s not tired of listening to. Her stomach growls.

“Hey, do you wanna get some food?”

“We should stay here in case they start to board people early.”

Clarke raises her eyebrows. “Really? We have...” She checks the time on her iPod. “ _80 minutes._ I think we’ll be okay. C’mon, I’m starving.”

“They serve dinner on the plane, it’s part of the cost.” Lexa says it like she doesn’t even believe herself, which she probably doesn’t. Nobody likes airplane food. “Fine. What were you thinking?”

“There’s an Italian place in the food court. It looked pretty good.”

–

“So, at this point, Lincoln and I are pretty sure we’ve committed an actual felony. Bellamy’s drunk off his ass in the swimming pool, Raven is _scaling the roof of the house_ , and Octavia is hopping the fence at breakneck speed to avoid the cops that we were 100% sure were coming for us. It’s past midnight, and that’s when the dog starts barking.”

Lexa watches her with wide eyes. This is without a doubt the strangest story that she has ever heard in her entire life. There is no way this is real.

“What happened?”

“Turns out it was a prank. Raven’s boss had just moved out of town and he’d given her the keys to his place to take care of it until he could come back and fix it up to sell it.” Clarke stabs one of the meatballs on her plate. “Not that they’d even bothered to tell us that, we were totally sure we’d just broken into a complete strangers house.”

“Lincoln never told me that story.”

Clarke chews slowly, focusing on the pasta on the plate in front of her. “Yeah. We had a lot of stupid stories like that.”

“Had?”

She nods.

“You’ll have more. She’ll forgive you, Clarke.” She doesn’t know what else to say, really. Clarke hasn’t been even remotely open about what happened between her and Octavia.

“You don’t even know what I did.”

“No. But I know whatever it was, it’s worth forgiving. Everyone deserves a second chance.”

“I hope you’re right.”

They eat mostly in silence after that. Clarke steals a few bites of her chicken parmesan. Lexa rolls her eyes, which only earns her a sly grin. She spends most of her time watching Clarke. The speed at which she can go from cheerful and nostalgic to heartbroken and out of sorts has started to give Lexa whiplash. It’s worse in moments like this, when there’s nothing she can do to help. Nothing more that she isn’t already doing, anyway.

When her watch reads 7:10 p.m. they leave their table in the food court. But Clarke insists on getting an ice cream cone, so they wait in line at the Dairy Queen stand for a few more minutes.

“You have crumbs on your coat.” She says, turning to pat down the shoulders and lapels of her leather jacket. “I know you always try to look intimidating, but you don’t pull it off very well with breadstick crumbs on your clothes.”

Lexa fights a smile and lets her continue to brush crumbs off of her.

The old man in line ahead of them turns around. “Your girlfriend’s right, you know.”

Clarke whips her head up. “What?”

“My granddaughter is the same way, always wearing all this... punk rock stuff.” He says it like it’s a dirty word, and Lexa feels like informing him that she’s not some _punk rock teenager_ , she’s the youngest woman in her profession within a fifty mile radius. “But half the time she’s got a chocolate stain on her band shirt.”

Clarke laughs with him and takes Lexa’s hand. She blanks for a second, unsure of how to respond, but then she remembers their arrangement. She remembers that this man called Clarke her girlfriend. She remembers that Clarke is probably doing this for practice, or something of the sort. She lets Clarke lace their fingers together loosely while she makes polite conversation with the man that had invited himself into their private discussion.

“How old is your granddaughter?”

“She’s 19. She looks a lot like you, actually. Blonde and beautiful.”

Lexa squeezes Clarke’s hand tighter.

“Thank you.”

Lexa locks her jaw.

“How long have you two been together?”

Clarke tucks herself into Lexa’s side, leaning her head against her shoulder. Lexa tries not to get distracted by the way she smells. She isn’t used to touching people this way, even if she is usually more tactile with Clarke than anyone else in her life. This is a new kind of intimacy and she doesn’t totally mind it. “Oh, just about a month. It’s kind of a new thing.”

Old Man Interruption turns to Lexa. “You’re a lucky girl.”

She smiles down at Clarke, getting lost in the act just long enough to believe him for a brief moment. “Yes, I am.”

When they reach the front of the line and the man leaves, Clarke pulls herself away from Lexa to order her ice cream cone, but she doesn’t pull her hand away. In fact, she doesn’t even pull her hand away when they both have their ice cream cones. As they walk through the airport, Lexa thinks that maybe Clarke is the type of person to hold hands with her friends, because there’s no one around to lie to anymore.

She doesn’t really mind it, since it’s Clarke.

“Did anyone ever tell you that you may have missed your calling, Clarke?”

Clarke drags her tongue over the vanilla ice cream cone and smiles. “Acting wasn’t really my thing. I’m not very good at memorizing lines.”

“Well, you can certainly improvise.” Lexa’s ice cream is dripping and she’d really like to wrap it with a napkin or something, but that would mean using both her hands and she’s not particularly excited about pulling away from Clarke. She does her best to lick the melting parts before the cone can get too messy.

“You’re not so bad yourself. Good job with the heart eyes, that guy back there totally bought into it. I’m pretty sure everyone in that line was convinced you were in love with me. Hell, even I was convinced for a second.”

Lexa frowns. She doesn’t know what she means by that, but she must admit to some confusion. Clarke was carrying their performance, for the most part. She wasn’t really trying anything. Lexa pulls her hand away and almost misses the disappointed look on Clarke’s face before she pulls one of the napkins that she had taken from the stand from her jacket pocket and wraps it around her ice cream cone.

“We’re gonna be good at this, I think. We work well together.”

Lexa doesn’t disagree with her there.

They finish off their ice cream cones long before they finish their walk back. Clarke starts to complain about her carry-on being heavy, so Lexa pulls the strap off of Clarke’s shoulder and throws it over her own with ease. Clarke thanks her, and they return to their regularly scheduled and mildly uncomfortable silence.

“You know, we should really talk about it.” She says, after they turn the corner into a less busy part of the airport. A few strangers walk from place to place with luggage in tow. The ceilings are high, the area well lit.

“Talk about what?”

“I mean... how far are we gonna take this thing?”

Lexa swallows. Her throat is dry. “How far do we need to?”

She just shrugs. “We’ll probably need to do some normal couple things. Things normal couples do. I just want to know what you’re comfortable with.”

“I’m comfortable with most things, I think.” It doesn’t even feel like a lie, not around Clarke. Clarke makes her feel secure.

“Like... hand holding?”

Lexa nods. “Hand holding is fine.” It’s more than fine.

Clarke reaches out to lace their fingers together again. They stop walking and stand in place as she runs her thumb across Lexa’s knuckles. “And other stuff? Standing close to each other? ...Body language stuff?”

“Also fine.”

Now that they’ve stopped walking, the people walking near them have to go around them. One middle aged woman huffs as she steps aside to move past them and Clarke tugs Lexa by the hand, pulling her out of the way and towards the wall.

It somehow gives them more privacy and Clarke takes that as an invitation to stand closer.

“I’m not very shy, as you’ve probably guessed.” She laughs, looking down at where their hands are intertwined. When she meets Lexa’s eyes again, she offers her a soft smile. “I just want to know where the line is so that I don’t accidentally cross it. You matter too much for me to make things weird and ruin us.”

“You underestimate my ability separate my feelings from our situation.” That didn’t quite come across the way she intended it. That sounds more like she has romantic feelings for Clarke, which wasn’t at all what she meant, but Clarke sails past the comment with grace and she’s grateful for it.

“Alright. Elephant in the room it is, then.” She mutters so low that Lexa almost doesn’t catch what she’s saying. She pronunciates better when she says, “How about kissing? Where do we stand there?”

Kissing. If she’s honest, she hadn’t really thought about it. Lexa was never one for public displays of affection, even when she was involved in a genuinely romantic relationship. If she’s honest, she thinks she might not be able to stop thinking about it, now. Because Clarke has no real concept of personal space and being in this kind of close proximity to her sometimes makes her thoughts cloudy. This is one of those times.

“Um,” is all she offers her. Lexa’s tongue darts out to lick her lips without really thinking about it and she worries that Clarke might take that as an invitation.

Maybe ‘worries’ isn’t the right word.

“If you’re not comfortable with it, that’s fine.”

“I’m not uncomfortable. Just... unsure.”

“We could practice.” She feels like Clarke is getting closer. Or she is. Has she moved? Has Clarke? “If that would make it easier. If you’re not comfortable with it now, then we can just not try it at all in front of other people.”

Kissing without anyone to convince, now the lines are definitely starting to blur.

Lexa nods. “There’s no point in doing anything half-heartedly.”

“That’s what I always say.”

Not exactly. Clarke always says there’s no point in doing anything half-assed, but Lexa thinks her version is a bit more eloquent.

“Okay.” Lexa licks her lips with purpose this time and her eyes dart down to Clarke’s lips. They’re pink and soft and she really wants to kiss her. She wonders in the back of her mind how long she’s wanted to kiss her, and she wonders if Clarke is what she wants, or just a kiss. It’s been years since she’s kissed anyone.

She hopes she’s not too rusty, because part of her really wants to impress Clarke.

Clarke licks her lips too and takes a step closer until Lexa can feel her breath against her jaw. “Do you want to start or...”

“You can start.”

Clarke nods. “Okay. Okay, I’ll start.”

She cups the back of Lexa’s neck and holds her hand there for a brief moment. She searches Lexa’s eyes for any sign of regret, but whatever she finds must be the exact opposite, because she bridges the gap between their lips a second later.

Her lips are soft. Incredibly soft. The way she fits against Lexa’s mouth feels natural. Normal. Kind of imperfect, and somehow that makes it unbelievably good. Lexa doesn’t miss the way that Clarke pulls at the back of her neck, holding them even closer. Lexa’s hands find Clarke’s hips and it feels somewhat awkward to hold her that way until Clarke’s free hand weaves it’s way into her hair.

She tastes sweet. Like vanilla ice cream. Like Clarke.

Her hand moves from the back of Lexa’s neck to cup her cheek as she drags her lips down far enough so that she can pull Lexa’s bottom lip between hers. She sucks on it gently and Lexa doesn't anticipate the reaction it stirs in her - a sudden passion she doesn't even recognize. Because Clarke is making the smallest, most satisfied noise in the world, and Lexa doesn't want to let her go. She really likes kissing this girl.

Their lips part for half a moment and Clarke rests her forehead against Lexa’s before she leans in again, aiming for that bottom lip one more time.

She could conceivably die, right here. Death by Clarke Griffin. Lexa realizes after another moment of pressing into Clarke that Clarke has no intention of backing down. She kisses back harder every time Lexa presses forward and eventually she gives up. She lets Clarke push her forward, even goes as far as to take a step backwards to maintain their balance. And then, for just a few seconds, the kiss is heated. Intense. More than she was really expecting, almost more than she’s prepared to deal with, but Clarke must notice it too because she slows it down. Lexa pulls back, dragging her nose across Clarke’s, leaning in for one more kiss–

Clarke steps back. “I think it’s probably safe to say... whatever else we do on this trip, we’ve definitely got this part down.”

Lexa nods, tries to remember how to speak the english language, and puts some distance between them. “Agreed.”

Clarke starts to laugh softly, shaking her head, and all Lexa really wants to do is kiss her again.

That’s inconvenient. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clarke has a lot of baggage, Lexa is a saint, and they both still think they're not making things weird.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> guess who's alive??? ya local clarke thirst enthusiast. enjoy this chapter as we await the sweet embrace of death from season 3.

Tense. That’s how Clarke would describe the flight. She does what she can to keep things casual, but when Lexa orders a glass of wine, she can tell she’s not the only one fixated on the kiss.

The kiss of _her life_. Maybe that’s an exaggeration, the kind that just happens when you replay a moment a hundred times in your head. Still, the only thing lingering in Clarke’s mind like the taste on her lips is one question; where has this girl been _practicing_?

Okay, there’s definitely more than one question up there, but she’d rather focus on this one.

They make small talk about Monty and Jasper and a couple of Lexa’s employees, but the kiss doesn’t come up again that night and they land in sometime around 1 a.m.

Lexa’s mom is the first familiar face they see when they get off the plane. Lincoln is the second, sparking anxiety deep in her gut. Maybe this wasn’t a good plan. Lincoln looks unhappily surprised to see her, but he fakes a smile and offers her a one-armed hug before slinging her carry-on over his shoulder.

Clarke is pretty sure Lexa doesn’t notice the tension between her and Lincoln or the fear growing in the pit of her stomach, but then Lexa clutches Clarke’s hand for a moment, just long enough to comfort her in silence. Maybe she’s not as good an actress as she thought.

There isn’t a lot of talk on the ride to the hotel. Everyone is tired for the most part and Lincoln talks mostly to Lexa’s mom.

Clarke falls asleep against Lexa’s shoulder in the backseat of Lincoln’s car and Clarke can’t help but wonder if she’s pretending for her mother or if, like Clarke, she only noticed their position ten minutes after her head sunk against Lexa’s shoulder.

It doesn’t matter, actually.

She’s not going to make it weird.

—

They’re alone again when they reach their hotel room and in a lot of ways it’s a relief. One sided tension or not, Lexa puts her at ease. And today she needs it. Lexa locks the door behind them and slides open the first door. It’s a closet.

“Not a lot of living space.” She comments, sounding annoyed as she eyes the dresser in front of the bed and the half-closet by the bathroom.

“I’ll take the dresser if you want the closet.” Clarke offers, struggling through a yawn.

“I don’t really do closets.”

Clarke sets her suitcase on the table by the window. She narrows her eyes. “Was that a gay joke?”

Lexa smiles to herself and starts to unpack.

Clarke unzips her suitcase and finds her phone charger first. She searches for a place to plug it into the wall, only finding the plug on the right side of the-

 _Bed_.

She stops, phone charger in hand. “Lexa, did your Mom put us in a room with only one bed?” Lexa has a taste for luxury, Clarke doubts she would have gotten a smaller hotel room to save money.

Lexa looks up from where she’s unpacking her things. “Typical.”

“She does that a lot?”

“No, but she sees no value in attention to detail.” Her eyes flit from the queen sized bed to the couch. “I’m sorry, I should have made the room reservation myself. You can have the bed.”

Clarke plugs in her phone and shrugs. “Don’t bother being selfless. That couch looks awful. And I don’t think it even pulls out.”

“I’m sure it’s fine.”

It’s a green, lumpy loveseat with a single pillow on it.

Lexa moves to sit down on one side of the couch and it’s clear it offers little to no comfort. “I’ve slept on worse,” she says, and after a beat, “on a camping trip. When I was eleven. I never went back,” She says, her lips quirking up and giving her away.

Clarke laughs and throws herself onto the bed and rolls over onto her stomach. She spreads out her arms and lays her head down on the mattress. “Hmm,” she sighs, “now this... this is an amazing mattress.” She rolls onto her back on the left side of the bed and adjusts herself until she’s comfortable against the pillows. “My new bed is great.”

Lexa scoffs. “ _Our_ new bed,” She corrects her before laying down on the other side.

Clarke laughs, adjusting herself as the mattress dips with Lexa’s weight. She rolls onto her side and props her head up against her chin. "I guess chivalry really is dead."

"Is it?" Lexa looks at her lips more than anything.

"Wouldn't it be indecent to be sleeping in the same bed?"

Lexa's eyes drag across Clarke's body before she meets her eyes quickly. "I thought we were already intimate."

"Right, I forgot. I'm amazing in bed, right?" Her eyes drift and focus on the third button of Lexa’s shirt. It had come undone sometime between the airport terminal and the hotel. She almost reaches for it, but holds back. There’s something funny about Lexa - always so composed and disciplined - coming undone in the smallest of ways around her.

She must be really tired if she’s thinking weird shit like that.

Lexa doesn't seem to know what to do with that, but she settles on laughing softly. "If by _in bed_ you mean _sleeping_ , then maybe."

"Hmm, not quite. But I'm good at that, too." She really is exhausted, though. Sleep sounds nice. "Fantastic, actually." Clarke pushes herself onto her stomach and wraps her arms around a pillow, settling in against it. "Watch and be amazed," she mumbles.

She lasts maybe a minute with her eyes closed before she peeks to see if Lexa is asleep. She's not, but Clarke can see she's getting there. There's something softer about her expression. She doesn't blink when Clarke catches her staring.

"Are you amazed yet?"

Lexa nods.

"Good."

The next time she opens her eyes, Lexa's mouth is parted and her eyes are closed. It's actually pretty amusing, like her single undone button.

—

When she wakes up again, Lexa is still asleep, but she must have woken up at some point during the night. The lights are off and the sheets are over them. When Clarke’s eyes adjust to the darkness she notices that Lexa changed into a soft gray t-shirt.

The next thing she notices is the faint hum of her phone vibrating on the floor where she’d plugged it in. She fumbles for it in the dark and unlocks it.

**Bellamy (6:06am):** _you’re in town??_

**Clarke (6:08am):** _word travels fast_

**Bellamy (6:08am):** _you bet your ass it does_

Clarke cringes. He’s mad. It’s predictable - she wasn’t exactly expecting a warm welcome, but an ally wouldn’t hurt. Clearly, she’s not that lucky.

-

Lexa is thirsty.

She’s also trapped and not entirely sure how she wound up like this. She’s a college educated intelligent woman. This isn’t that difficult to maneuver out of.

Her drink is no more than eight inches away, but she has one arm around Clarke and her “girlfriend” had claimed her free hand to lace their fingers together for show in the middle of an exaggerated story about their first date. That’s the part she quite likes, actually. Clarke makes casual touching feel easy. But she hasn’t figured out how or when she can pull away. Clarke’s thumb continues to absentmindedly stroke the side of Lexa’s hand, the ice in her apple juice is melting, and she really is thirsty. The last thing she had to drink was one of the overpriced water bottles from their minibar, and that was hours ago.

Speaking of which, Clarke hasn’t relaxed much since they got off the plane to greet Lexa's family. One look at Lincoln and she had tensed up. She was calmer when they were alone in the hotel room. She was peaceful when she was asleep. By the time Lexa had woken up this morning, Clarke had already showered and worried herself for at least an hour. And now, sitting across from Lincoln and her mother, Clarke is tense. Maybe she's bracing herself for whatever she was expecting from Octavia, who hadn’t come to the airport or to breakfast. Despite what she might have expected from him, Lincoln had smiled politely then and he was smiling politely now.

And that’s how Lexa found herself here, in the corner booth of a pancake house - an establishment that somehow represents the opposite of everything Lexa stands for. Cheap cutlery, laminated placemats with menus on them, and a dish called Mama Mandy's Finger Lickin' Good Scrambled Egg Mixer.

Lexa allots an appropriate amount of time to consider why in the world someone would need to lick their fingers after eating scrambled eggs like a civilized person. She's not some kind of savage beast who eats eggs with her hands and she hopes that if _Mama Mandy_ is, she's at least not the person cooking her breakfast.

When the waitress comes by for their orders, Lexa orders a stack of respectable pancakes. She still has Clarke tucked under her arm and her drink out of reach. The waitress winks at Lincoln and leaves.

Clarke and Lincoln make polite conversation while Lexa rubs circles across Clarke’s shoulder, trying to calm her down.

She really is tense around him.

When Lincoln gets distracted by a text message, Clarke lets go of her hand to reach for a drink. Lexa takes her chance while she has it and reaches for her own.

“So, Clarke...” Her Mother starts. “What do you do?”

“I work at a hospital.”

“Oh, you’re a doctor?”

That gets to her. She can feel it in the way Clarke’s shoulders fall. Lexa knows the story, she knows she dropped out of her program before she could even start Medical School. “No. No, I just work for them. Maybe one day, though.”

Lexa is at least grateful that her Father isn’t here. Her Mother is one thing. She can be proud of anyone. Her Father has “ _standards”_.

“Oh, well what do you do for them?”

“I help move the patients. Those gurneys don’t push themselves, y’know?” She says with a soft laugh. “I’m actually thinking about going to nursing school in the next few years.”

“Oh, that’s lovely. Well,” She clasps her hands together. “As long as you’re healthy and happy.”

Clarke takes Lexa’s hand again and looks at her. Clarke’s eyes seem bluer than ever when she’s this close, as if they could stare right through her. She’s almost too distracted for the moment to play along when Clarke says, “I am. I’m very happy.”

Despite watching her so closely, she forgets to search for cues. When Clarke kisses her, Lexa isn’t prepared. Her eyes don’t close, she forgets to kiss back, and she holds her breath. There’s no trace of the first kiss they shared. This one is gentle and chaste but that does nothing to stop the feeling in the pit of her stomach that makes her wish she could stop time.

Nothing but trouble, that’s what that feeling is.

—

Clarke spends an unnecessary amount of time on the ride back to the hotel wondering what the fake girlfriend protocol is when it comes to spending time alone. They take a cab, so they’re kind of alone, but then there’s middle-aged Robbie, the taxi driver with a goatee and an unsettling habit of watching Lexa through the rear view mirror. Clarke puts her hand on Lexa’s knee as a warning. She’s _taken_ , it says - or at least _fake taken_. She’s certainly not good enough for goateed Robbie.

He smiles and that’s _creepy_ , but he doesn’t stare at Lexa as much after that.

She doesn’t take her hand away from Lexa’s knee and Lexa doesn’t do anything about it.

She can shake off that entire scenario and blame it on Robbie The Cab Creep, but soon they’ll be really alone and she’s not sure how they’re supposed to act around each other now that this whole _thing_ is in motion. Is there a fake relationship version of no homo? Because she probably needs one right about now, just to make things clear. Because it’s not weird. She’s not gonna let things get weird.

Clarke decides to just play it cool. It’s not even a big deal.

Lexa swipes their card and the handle on the hotel door beeps, letting them in.

"So,” Clarke starts, trying to keep one of her burning questions casual and nonchalant, “Have you met Octavia yet?"

Lexa sets her purse on the table and moves to pull her laptop out of her suitcase. She opens it and sits down, the machine humming when she turns it on. "Not unofficially."

Clarke falls back on the bed and kicks her shoes off. "What does that mean?"

Lexa types her password into her computer and her desktop comes up. Clarke peeks. Her wallpaper is just black.

Predictable.

"She works for me."

"Seriously?"

"In a way. She works under Indra, Indra works under me. Indra has teams in multiple states. We don't have a direct line of communication open, if that's what you're asking."

Clarke lets her bag fall off her shoulder and then rifles through the junk she keeps in there. A few packages of crackers, two pairs of headphones, spare tampons, and the wallet she was searching for. She flips it open and shuffles to the edge of the bed.

"This was us in college." She says, slipping the christmas photo out of her wallet and handing it to Lexa.

Lexa holds it for a moment, a smile betraying her usually stoic expression. "You look so different. Still beautiful, just... different."

Clarke grins, imagining a world where she could have known Lexa in college.

"I can't believe she works for you, there's no way our world is that small."

Lexa rolls her eyes. "Maybe it's fate." And of all the sarcastic things she's said, Clarke thinks that one just might take the cake. If anyone believes in fate, it's definitely not Lexa.

"How romantic."

Lexa's smile fades as she looks at the picture again. "Who's the boy?"

"You've met Bellamy." Clarke swallows and takes the picture back.

"I meant the one with his arm around you." Lexa says, a lot more hesitant now than she was a moment ago.  Clarke knew who she was talking about.

"Finn."

"Was he your-"

"He's dead." She puts the picture back in her wallet and focuses on putting it back in her bag.

"I'm so sorry."

Clarke just nods. She can count the people she's told about Finn on one hand and she's sure she doesn't want to talk about it for another minute. She doesn't know if Lexa understands what that’s like.

She hopes she doesn't.

—

Some time after lunch - which is just a collection of vending machine snacks and a mostly serious lecture from Lexa about the value of proper nutrition - they're lying on the bed in the hotel room, watching reruns of _Frasier_. Clarke has every intention to keep comparing Lexa to Niles every five minutes.

They've been playing a lazy version of footsie for the last twenty minutes or so when Lexa's text tone goes off. She reaches for her phone on the side table and Clarke hooks her foot around Lexa's ankle to keep her steady.

Lexa kicks her away with a grin that she'd stopped fighting ten minutes ago.

She reads the text and pockets her phone. "Duty calls."

Clarke props herself up with an elbow. "What's up?"

Lexa stands, pulls her jacket from the chair by the table, and slips her arms through the sleeves. "We're going cake tasting with my Mother."

"We?" Clarke raises an eyebrow.

"Yes. _We_. You have many favors to pay back."

Okay, fair.

“It’s cake tasting.” Lexa says. She shrugs. “Maybe your friend will come. It’s her cake, right?”

—

Lexa was wrong, and she can see the disappointment in Clarke’s eyes when they slip through the door of the bakery. The doorbell chimes and their eyes land on Lincoln and her Mother, sitting at a table that seats six. The vacant spots next to Lincoln speak volumes.

Clarke is the first to speak. “Is Octavia coming?”

“She was. Something came up.” Lincoln says.

“And Bellamy?”

“Same thing.”

Clarke locks her jaw and her eyes drift to the floor. It’s the picture of disappointment and she’s already regretting making her come. Lexa’s hand finds its way to Clarke’s back. “I’m sorry,” She whispers.

Clarke shakes her head. _It’s fine_ , her forced smile says.

—

This whole situation was nothing but a bad idea.

Clarke takes a seat next to Lexa at the table while Anne, Lexa’s mother, explains that this is just a pre-tasting, a tasting to narrow down their options before the bride-to-be makes a choice. _She’s very busy, you know,_ she says.

Clarke doesn’t buy it. Nobody at the table buys it. Bellamy knows she’s here, which means Octavia knows. She’d hoped Octavia had calmed down. It _has_ been years. In truth she probably has calmed down, the hate she felt for Clarke seamlessly shifting into a bitter grudge she refuses to let go of. It would be true to form for Octavia.

But still, she had really hoped for a chance.

And now there’s little to no chance of fixing things. She’ll probably get kicked out before the wedding. At best, she’ll only ruin the comfortable friendship she has with Lexa. At worst, she’ll ruin Lexa’s brother’s wedding and Lexa and Octavia will hate her together.

Lexa brushes her knuckles against Clarke’s wrist to catch her attention. With just a look, she stops Clarke’s thoughts in their tracks.

“So, Lexa,” Lincoln leans back in his seat. “You haven’t really mentioned Clarke before you brought her here.”

Oh, that’s fantastic. Another thing to add to the worry plate. Lincoln sees right through them.

Anne rolls her eyes. “Please, Lincoln, Lexa’s such a private girl. She could decide to run for president and we probably wouldn’t hear about it until the election.”

Clarke laughs at the mental picture. That actually draws a smile from Lexa, but Lincoln doesn’t waver.

A woman in an apron sets half of a chocolate cake in the middle of their table. Clarke and Anne absentmindedly pick up their forks to get a taste, but Lexa takes her time carving a slice for their plate.

She chose a truly meticulous person to fake date.

Clarke opts for taking a chunk of cake out of their shared slice and she’s glad her mouth is full by the time Anne starts asking more questions.

“So, how exactly did you two meet, you keep glossing over the details when it comes up.”

Clarke laughs around her mouthful of what is actually really great chocolate cake. Mostly at the memory of their first meeting but partly because Lexa is a terrible, terrible liar who has to make a choice; either lie or tell her Mother that they met while her current girlfriend was piggybacking off her wifi to watch porn.

Lexa presses her lips into a thin line. “It’s an amusing story, actually. Clarke, would you like to tell it?”

Clarke swallows her cake and shakes her head innocently. “Nope, you got it, babe.”

Lexa narrows her eyes. “Really?”

“Really.”

Clarke shoves another forkful of cake in her mouth as Lexa locks her jaw.

“We met in the middle of the night, actually.”

No way.

“I was streaming a documentary and my feed kept buffering. It was 2 a.m. and I’d never had that problem before. Clarke had just moved in recently, however. So, I made my conclusion.”

She _wouldn’t_.

“I assumed my new neighbor was using my wi-fi and I was right. I knocked on her door and she admitted she was using my easily accessible connection to-”

“Read the bible.” Clarke interrupts, kicking Lexa’s foot under the table.

Lexa only grins and nods. “That’s right.”

“Well, that’s... nice.” Anne smiles sweetly at them.

The story has no effect on Lincoln, of course. Not that it should, it’s no meet cute, but the fact that he doesn’t believe them frustrates Clarke to no end. Lying is the one thing she _can_ do well.

On an impulse, Clarke takes what’s left of their slice of cake and feeds it to Lexa sloppily. It’s too much for a mouthful and most of the icing sticks to her chin and around her lips. She can see Lincoln watching them in the corner of her eye, so she leans in to kiss the chocolate off her skin in quick pecks that make Lexa freeze. She’ll explain this to her later. Or maybe she won’t. Lexa knows what they’re doing, she made a point of being okay with affection. This is what they practiced for in the first place.

Speaking of practice.

Clarke meets Lexa’s lips in a kiss not all that different from their first kiss. For the first time since they got here, Lexa takes the lead for her. She moves her hand to cup Clarke’s cheek and deepen the kiss.

 _Lexa must like the taste of the chocolate_ , she thinks. Clarke knows she certainly does.

Clarke sweeps her tongue across Lexa’s bottom lip to taste the frosting still there and Lexa pulls back quickly.

Yeah, that was probably a bit much.

She looks back to Lincoln, arms crossed and head tilted, like something just occurred to him. The things Clarke would give to be in his head right now.

“So,” Anne says, “Is this good cake or what?”

Lexa blushes. “Very good.”

—

As it turns out, going on vacation - does it count as a vacation? Maybe - going on vacation with Lexa doesn’t mean Clarke gets her all to herself. It’s almost dark out and Lexa is typing away at her laptop and talking with someone named Anya on skype.

Clarke lays on her back on the bed and counts the ceiling tiles. Lexa continues to switch back and forth between typing and speaking.

“Anya, this is a business meeting. We have more than one deadline to meet.” A pause, presumably while Anya speaks. “Yes.” She types something instead of responding out loud. She’s been doing this for an hour now and Clarke really wants to know what’s such a secret that she can’t say it loud. Even if it’s boring business stuff. She wouldn’t mind knowing more about Lexa’s life and Clarke is _so_ bored. She’ll take what she can get.

Lexa huffs. “You’re twisting my words.” A pause. “You know I’m not going to do that. No. No, I’m not... You’re not as smart as you think, you know that?” She sighs. “Fair enough. That doesn’t make you right.”

After a few seconds of silence, Lexa laughs. “You have no idea how complicated a question that is.”

She switches back to typing after that and Clarke pouts. Now she’s _really_ curious.

“Stop.” Lexa demands, but it does nothing to stop the girl on the other line. “Anya, don’t - No, do not go there. Anya-”

Clarke’s eavesdropping is interrupted by a knock on the door.

Outside their room, a girl’s voice yells, “Room service.”

Clarke knows that voice.

She pushes herself off the bed and nearly stumbles on her way to the door.

She swings the door open to reveal one of the five best people she’s ever known, smiling brightly at her. Clarke grins out of sheer relief. “Raven, hey!”

“I’ve been trying to find you all day, I just found out you were here.” Raven reaches forward for a hug and for just a moment, Clarke sinks into it like she’s 18 again and Raven is her best friend in the entire world. Maybe, had she not listened to Bellamy’s advice and not left Raven to heal on her own, she still would be.

Clarke pulls away to get a better look at her. Her hair is longer now, but the thing that catches Clarke’s eye immediately is the brace on her leg. She vaguely remembers Bellamy telling her about an accident a year ago. He’d never mentioned this.

“Raven, I didn’t- I didn’t know, I would’ve come to see you if I’d known you were hurt. Bellamy said you were fine?”

“I am.” She shrugs. “It sucks, but... I’m dealing with it.”

“You always have.”

Raven nods, her smile fading fast. “Listen. It’s great to see you, but I’m here as a courtesy call.  Bellamy’s coming... and he’s bringing Octavia. Like, right now.”

Clarke catches sight of movement in the corner of her eye. Octavia and Bellamy march towards them, almost storming the hall in that powerful way only two people like Bellamy and Octavia can do. Clarke feels anxiety well up in her gut and she lets out a deep breath.

“Thanks.” She whispers to Raven, who takes that as her cue to distract Bellamy for her. At least she does have one ally here. When they come to a stop in front of her door, Raven puts a hand against Bellamy’s chest and catches him off guard before tugging on his arm and turning him around to walk down the hallway.

Octavia comes to a stop in front of Clarke and then leans up against the wall opposite to her hotel room door, crossing her arms. “Well. I’m here.”

Clarke shuts the door to her room behind her. “Hey.”

She’s subdued, less angry than Clarke expects her to be. She looks older, no streaks of color in her hair like she used to have in college. Her hair is in braids and she has her nose pierced. The amount of leather she wears certainly hasn’t changed a bit.

“What do you want?” She says shortly.

“I just want to talk.” Clarke rubs her sweaty palms against the side of her pants. “Maybe you could get a drink with me?”

“Like hell I would, I don’t want to talk to you.”

Clarke’s shoulders slump and she sighs. “Then why are you here?”

She shrugs. “I should be asking you that.”

“I just want you to understand what happened, if you would just talk to me, you would.”

“Never.” Octavia pushes herself off the wall and turns her attention down the hall, away from Clarke. “Here’s how this is gonna work. I’ll let you stay, if you want to be here for your _girlfriend_. That’s fine. I’m glad to see you finally know how to treat someone that you’re dating.”

Clarke’s blood runs cold. “That’s not fair.”

“Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. Just don’t be at my wedding.” She turns on her heel and leaves, taking the last word like she always does. Clarke doesn’t mind. She wouldn’t even know what to say right now.

She falls back against the door and slides to the carpeted floor, her head falling into her hands.

—

Lexa finds her there a few minutes later.

When Clarke looks up, she’s leaning against the doorframe, her expression soft. She’s worried about her.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we have an adequate floor inside the hotel room as well. Any particular reason you prefer the hallway?”

Clarke chews on her bottom lip for a moment before confessing. “I just saw Octavia.”

“Oh.” Lexa slides to the floor to join her against the wall. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Clarke shrugs.

“Do you want to drink about it?”

“Yeah, that’d be good.”

Lexa stands, offers her a hand to pull her to her feet. She’s not focused, so when Lexa tugs her up, she crashes into her. Lexa balances her with a hand on her arm and brushes off the awkwardness as they step inside again.

The room feels more comfortable now than it did a moment ago. Nobody in here hates her, nobody in here wishes she was gone. Most importantly, the room has Lexa, the calmest person she’s ever known. She feels better just being around her.

Lexa rifles through the minibar and pulls out four miniature bottles of something.

“What are we drinking?”

“Whiskey and gin.”

“Sounds great.”

Clarke follows behind her as Lexa opens the sliding glass door and slips out onto the balcony. The sun has already set, turning the view of a street and a gas station into the view of the crescent moon. The cool breeze feels refreshing and Clarke is very much looking forward to getting drunk.

Lexa hands her a miniature bottle of whiskey. “Who was the girl at the door?”

Clarke twists the cap off. “Raven. She was the other girl in the picture I showed you.” Clarke takes a sip. “We were close, Raven, Octavia, and I.”

“What happened?” Lexa sniffs her bottle of gin and raises her eyebrows before she takes a sip.

Clarke rests her forearms against the railing. “I screwed up.”

“We all make mistakes.”

“Not like this. Not like-” She takes a deep breath, another drink, and shakes her head.

“Does this have anything to do with why you chose not to go to medical school?”

“Yeah. It does.”

In a softer, more sensitive tone, Lexa asks, “Does it have to do with the boy in the picture?”

Clarke’s lips trembles and she looks down at the hotel parking lot. A girl bums a smoke off of a guy leaning up against his truck. Two women talk animatedly in the front seat of a Toyota. A stray cat sits underneath a streetlight.

“Yeah.” She nods, her voice cracking on the word.

“Do you want me to stop asking questions?”

 _Yes._ Clarke doesn’t want to tell her anything about Finn. She doesn’t want Lexa to ever know this side of her, this part of her life. She wants Lexa, everything about her and everything they have to stay safe in the comfort of their own privacy, untouched by the mistakes she’s made. She shouldn’t have anything to do with Finn or Raven or Octavia.

Except she does. She’s already involved, as Lincoln’s sister. She’s about to be Octavia’s sister in law.

Clarke’s blood runs cold when she wonders for just a second if maybe Lexa already knows the story. It’s not impossible, Lincoln lived it just as much as Octavia did. They’re not close, but he could have mentioned it. Dead college friends are the kind of thing your family knows about, inevitably.

But no, she couldn’t know. Lincoln is just as private as Lexa is. But he might one day.

“I should tell you.”

Lexa shakes her head. “You don’t have to talk about anything you don’t want to.”

“No, I should.” Clarke swirls the rest of the liquid in the bottle around a few times before she downs what’s left of her whiskey and sighs. “Finn’s dead because of me.”

Lexa’s eyebrows furrow and she cocks her head to the side just slightly, a picture of confusion. Still, it’s a damn good poker face for the subject at hand.

“It wasn’t just Octavia and Raven and I in college. Finn was always part of our group. It actually used to be Raven and Finn and I. Raven dated Finn in high school and I kind of... stole him.” She laughs. At the time, it had seemed like the most dramatic event of the century. In hindsight, she can’t believe it took her and Raven so long to get over themselves. “Long story short, Raven hated me for a while. Then my Dad died and... She was the only one who got it. We became fast friends after that, and didn’t even worry about the Finn thing anymore. Finn and I dated in college, and by then, it was always supposed to be Finn and I. Everybody knew that, even Raven. He was a completely incredible guy. Goofy, trusting, reckless, and just... really kind. If you knew Finn, you just liked him.”

Lexa nods. “You liked him.”

“I did.”

“But he loved you?”

Clarke sighs and turns her back to the railing. “At some point in college, he turned the corner from high school sweethearts into serious relationship territory and left me behind.”

“I see.”

“I still don’t know what was wrong with me. I had the perfect guy but he was never enough. I couldn’t see myself with him, not forever. And once you start thinking that way...”

“You never stop.” Lexa mirrors her position against the railing. “You can’t control the way people make you feel or not feel, Clarke, that’s not your fault.”

“I know.”

“So what happened?”

“So, I broke it off. And I broke his heart.” Clarke looks up at Lexa for the first time since she started talking, bracing herself for any reaction. She looks stoic, as always, but her eyes betray her. There’s a gentleness about them that Clarke suspects has always been there.

“I take it that’s not where the story ends.”

“No. I didn’t end things right with Finn.”

“What did he do?”

She runs a hand through her hair and rushes to get the words out this time, wanting this part of the conversation to be over with as soon as possible. “He stalked me. Told me he loved me about a thousand times. Bought a ring, proposed. Apologized, begged, cried, the works. He wouldn’t take no for an answer when I told him it was over. So I did what I had to do, that’s all. I told him I didn’t love him, I told him I’d cheated on him with a friend of his, I told him all kinds of lies to try to give him closure. None of it worked.”

She feels sick just saying it, like she’s disparaging his memory. And after all he’d been through, too.

“What finally did work?”

“Bellamy.”

That’s the first thing to get a reaction from Lexa. She raises an eyebrow and actually looks surprised.

“He saved me from the whole thing. I don’t know what he said to Finn, but next thing we all knew, he was shipping out.”

“He joined the military?”

“He enlisted, yeah. Didn’t even tell any of us, except for Bellamy. He just joined the army and left. Finn, the democratic gun control enthusiast. If you knew him, you’d get how disorienting that is. It’s like you waking up and deciding it’s a good day to join the circus.”

Lexa nods solemnly. “And that’s how he...”

“Died. Yes. They said it was friendly fire.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. I’ve dealt with it, for the most part. Octavia’s pretty much the long pole in the tent of putting it behind me. After I heard, I just dropped out. I hadn’t talked to Octavia or Raven or anyone really since the break up. I called my Mom, she got me a job, took care of me. By the time I was ready to face Raven and O, they weren’t answering the phone. Bellamy was always there for me. It took years for Raven to forgive me. Octavia still hasn’t.”

Lexa pushes her extra bottle of gin to Clarke. “Here, you need this more than I do.”

Clarke laughs softly and wipes at her eyes. “Thanks.”

They spend a moment in silence, Clarke trying to regain her composure and Lexa watching her, as composed as ever.

“It’s not your fault, you know.” She says.

“No, it was.”

“It wasn’t. I’m not trying to tell you to feel better or move on. I just know that you can’t reason with someone so single-minded. You shouldn’t blame yourself for not doing the impossible.”

Maybe what she says feels absurd and maybe it hits far closer to home than Clarke is comfortable with, but whatever the reason, she’s ready for a subject change right about now.

“What about you? Any tragic backstories?”

Lexa chuckles, clearly uncomfortable. “Not so tragic, no. But I did have a girlfriend once date me just to get close enough to get what she needed to destroy my father’s political career.” She says it so casually, but the way she throws back the rest of her drink says everything Lexa doesn’t. “So just in case you’re wondering, you’re not the first girl to use me.”

It’s a surprising punch to the gut to hear that, and Lexa must realize it a second too late because she looks at Clarke shocked.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that to sound harsh.”

“It’s okay, I deserve it.” Clarke smiles through the blunt moment. “But, you should know... You mean more to me than this. You know that right? I’m not just using you.” Clarke reaches for her hand, laces their fingers together and squeezes. She hasn’t been any good at handling moments like this, not since Finn. She hates vulnerability but Lexa deserves nothing less after what she’s put her through.

Still, it feels bold and makes her heart race.

“If you want to stop lying to them about us, just say the word and it’s done. I care about us more than I care about trying to salvage my relationship with Octavia.” Just saying the words is all it takes for it to hit her that she really means them. How had they grown this close in a matter of months? Sometimes she feels like part of her has been missing Lexa all her life.

Lexa’s eyes drift to their joined hands and her lips part. She takes a deep breath and meets Clarke’s eyes. “I don’t want to stop.”

—

The stress of the evening catches up to Clarke eventually, or maybe it’s the alcohol, because she’s fast asleep in a few hours.

Lexa on the other hand feels just the opposite. Her mind is racing still, trying to keep up with the way she felt when Clarke told her what she meant to her and the way she felt when Clarke opened up to her.

What she left out of the conversation with Clarke about her own experiences is what it taught her. Never leave yourself vulnerable to another person. Never expose your heart to someone with so much power over you. Clarke is that person for her, there’s no doubt about that anymore. But she doesn’t want to think about that and she can’t make herself fall asleep in the state she’s in, so instead she slips out of their hotel room and finds herself in the bar downstairs minutes later.

One drink later, a familiar voice catches her attention. “Can’t sleep?”

Lexa turns to see Lincoln in his trademark leather jacket and jeans, sliding onto a bar stool two seats down from her.

“No. What about you? Not getting cold feet, are you?” Lexa sips at her drink, wondering if it’s unkind to wish that he was. If the wedding was cancelled she and Clarke would get to go home.

“Not likely. Don’t go returning any wedding gifts of ours. Unless you bought us a blender, ‘cause I’m pretty sure we’ve already got four of those from Octavia’s friends.”

In truth, she hadn’t even considered getting them a wedding gift. She should probably buy something.

“Is there anything no one has bought you yet?”

“Well, you could give Octavia a raise,” He jokes, but Lexa doesn’t appreciate the implication.

“That’s not quite how things operate in my line of work.”

Lincoln nods, already dropping the subject, but something about the concept rubs Lexa the wrong way and she feels like picking a fight right now.

“Besides. Octavia doesn’t present promising skills.”

“What?”

Lexa feels a tiny thrill at having the power to make this particular decision. She doesn’t _like_ Octavia, she realizes. Not at all.

“She’s held a grudge for four years over something that was out of anyone’s control, has she not? She’s far too emotional and hot-headed. I can’t trust her with my work.”

Lincoln tenses up, getting defensive as she had expected. “You don’t know her.”

“I don’t need to know her. I’ve seen those who succeed and those who fail. Octavia is acting like a child. She may be your girlfriend but I have no obligations to you or her to make her my employee. I won’t deny that she’s done an acceptable job working for Indra, but nothing worth noticing.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“I’m not doing anything.”

Lincoln slides one bar stool closer to her and lowers his voice. “No. You are. You’re doing this for Clarke. You’re angry at Octavia without even knowing the full story.”

“I don’t need to know the story. I know Clarke.”

He folds his hands in front of him and the corner of his mouth quirks up into a smile. “You’re in love with her.”

Lexa tenses up. It’s hard to keep honesty and their fabricated reality separate when she’s been drinking. “We’ve only been together... for a little over a month.”

“Cut the crap, Lexa. We both know you two have been pretending.”

Lexa stares at him for a moment. Now she’s confused and a little bit angry. “If you don’t believe us why would you accuse me of being in love with her?”

Lincoln laughs as he pulls money out of his wallet to pay for Lexa’s drink, always the gentleman. He stands up to leave. “Look in the mirror when you’re with her one of these days, maybe you’ll see what everyone else does.”

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lexa won't say it.  
> (She's totally gonna say it.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> john mayer can suck my dick, "edge of desire" off his battle studies album is literally the fdau anthem. honorable mention for "friends, lovers, or nothing", which can also suck my dick

Despite being known for her finesse and composure, Lexa isn’t as graceful as she’d like to be when she wakes up after a night of drinking.

Whatever measure of dignity she might have maintained had she woken up alone is gone by the time she opens her eyes. Clarke is much closer than she had been when Lexa had slipped into bed last night. If she could say their nearness now was a big difference, she would.

Except she can’t. It had been a long day for Clarke, Lexa had had more to drink than she was entirely comfortable with, and from the first night here, she had noticed the bed sharing to be a non-issue once the clocks struck A.M. If Clarke could reach for her in the quietest hours of the night, Lexa could justify finding a way to hold her on her own terms - be it a hand on Clarke’s wrist or a shared pillow like it had been last night.

She knows what it means. What should have come as a surprise (followed by paralyzing fear) to her only brought relief when reality struck her in that hotel bar with Lincoln. _Of course_ that’s what it is. That’s what it’s been for longer than she’ll admit. And yet.

She won’t say it, not even to herself.

They’re not touching, but they’re close. Closer than she should want them to be. Clarke has a lazy hold on the hem of Lexa’s t-shirt, anchoring them to each other. Turning on her side, Lexa brushes the hair out of Clarke’s face so she can look at her.

“Five more minutes.” Clarke mumbles, not opening her eyes. Lexa pulls her hand back, but Clarke doesn’t seem to notice anything out of the ordinary.

She’s content to just lie there with her as long as she’d like, but Clarke yawns and rolls towards her, With her back to Lexa, they’re kind of... cuddling. Except it doesn’t really count. Not with Lexa’s hand awkwardly hanging in the air. What’s she supposed to do with her hand? She could drape it over Clarke, but that would probably mean holding her chest. That’s certainly not appropriate. She could keep it to herself but it doesn’t feel comfortable anywhere. There’s not enough space between them anymore to rest it on the bed. She settles for resting her hand on Clarke’s shoulder. Clarke is content enough with that to sigh.

Clarke smells very good, she notices. Holding her is the least relaxed she’s ever been.

Five more minutes turns into 15, and then when she’s sure Clarke is asleep again, Lexa tries to get comfortable herself. She sinks into their shared pillow and lets her knuckles drag across the length of Clarke’s arm, settling her hand on her waist.

That’s enough to wake Clarke. She rolls onto her back again, blinks at Lexa slowly and smacks her lip, trying to wake up.

It’s exceptionally charming.

“Morning.”

Lexa pulls at Clarke’s wrist and twists the sports watch she wears to read it. “It’s nearly noon, actually.”

Clarke checks the time too and rolls her eyes. “It’s 10:24, don’t be so dramatic.” When she drops her arm, Clarke seems to notice their general closeness. “Sorry, I guess we kind of...” She gestures to the lack of space between them.

“We did.”

“You’re okay with that?”

Lexa nods at the understatement. Clarke’s eyes drop towards a spot on Lexa’s neck. She furrows her eyebrows and shakes her head so imperceptibly that Lexa can’t be sure Clarke knows she’s doing it.

Clarke looks up again when she asks, “So, what’s on the schedule for today?”

“Nothing today, thank God.” Lexa sits up and props herself against a pillow. “There’s an event in a few days but I don’t think I need to go.”

“What is it?”

“Dancing lessons with the maid of honor.” She wouldn’t have minded attending that with Clarke, but it seemed cruel now that Clarke was uninvited to the wedding. In fact being here in general seemed cruel, but Lexa is too selfish to ask why Clarke hasn’t asked for a one way ticket home already.

Clarke looks up at her from where she’s still laying down. “Bellamy’s going to teach us how to dance?”

“I think he hired someone.”

Clarke thinks for a moment and then decidedly says, “We should go.”

“Why would we?”

“Octavia did say I could be here for you. How many chances does anyone really get to see Lexa Woods dancing.”

That hadn't occurred to her yet. She thinks she’ll have to cross that bridge when she reaches it, right now she needs to worry about keeping her affections for Clarke in check.

“We’ll see.” Is all she says. But if Clarke wants to go, she knows her answer is already a yes.

-

“Why don’t you just seat me at the open bar? You know it’s where I’ll be half the night.” Raven jokes, but it’s not that far from the truth.

Octavia shakes her head. “I’m counting on it, your name’s just a placeholder at our table.” She picks up the toothpick flag labeled ‘Raven’ and drops her in the seat next to the bride and groom flags on the corkboard seating chart. “If you don’t sit here, Nyko will.”

Bellamy frowns and leans forward to look at the centermost table on the chart. “Don’t you think Lincoln’s best man should sit with you at your wedding?”

Octavia shrugs. “He’s just a coworker, I’m sure he likes Raven better.”

“Damn right he does.” Raven crosses her arms proudly and sits back, surveying the masterpiece seating chart between them. They’ve perfected it, but Raven can’t help but notice there are a few seats still empty. The chair beside Lexa’s flag, to name one. Octavia voices what Raven is thinking.

“Clarke had some nerve showing up here.”

Maybe not exactly what Raven was thinking.

“How’d your talk go the other day?”

She shrugs. “I told her to get lost. She can stay for her girlfriend or whatever, but I don’t want her near my wedding.”

Raven sits up. “What did she say to that?”

“She said she wanted to talk.”

“Maybe you could hear her out.” Octavia glares at her, but Raven doesn’t waver. Usually she would; none of them like to talk about Finn or Clarke. Finn still feels like an open wound and talking about Clarke always makes Bellamy uncomfortable - probably because of his position as middleman. And yet she doesn’t waver now. Raven would be a liar if she said she wasn’t jealous. She’s long since forgiven Clarke and had a handful of somewhat awkward conversations with her, but they’re roughly on the same page. Finn talk is off the table with Clarke, too. Even more so, in fact.

Sometimes she just wants closure. And here Clarke is, willing and ready to give that to Octavia, just because she’s less forgiving. She shouldn’t be jealous like this but Octavia shouldn’t be taking this for granted either.

“What? You think I should?”

“No,” Bellamy cuts her off before Raven can say anything, “She crossed a line coming here. Don’t reward that.”

Raven narrows her eyes at Bellamy. Maybe it’s some irrational brotherly protection thing, but it doesn’t feel fair that he gets Clarke and Octavia to himself and doesn’t bother to try and fix things. It doesn’t sit right with her.

“You’re one to talk.” Raven glares at him until he looks away, frowning but dead set in his opinion.

“Yeah,” Octavia sits up. “You’ve always been on her side.”

“I’m not on anybody’s side.” He says, his tone dark and vaguely frustrated.

“You certainly weren’t on Finn’s.” Octavia mutters under her breath and it’s a low blow. She knows by now that it’s not about Finn anymore, just about how little control she had over that winter. Octavia won’t stay helpless if she can do anything about it, even if all she can do is strike back.

But Bellamy always gives as good as he gets.

“I was the _only_ one on Finn’s side.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Bellamy looks down, shakes his head, and drops his tone. “Nothing. Forget it.”

“Whatever, I don’t want to talk to Clarke anyway.”

This time it’s Raven that can’t help but strike back. “So you’re never gonna stop being angry?”

Octavia bristles. “I’m not angry. I just see her for who she really is. A selfish coward who ditched all of us for no reason.” The room feels heavier now, three very different people feeling the same thing. Octavia moves a few flags around their centerpiece and when the silence gets to be too much, she breaks it. “She didn’t even come to his funeral, Ray.”

Everything she was feeling before slips away, and the words cut deep into all of them. Bellamy stands to leave in silence, Octavia stares blankly at the chart in front of her, and Raven sinks back into her seat.

Finn still feels like an open wound.

-

“Ten letter word for leave of absence.” Clarke reads off the crossword puzzle in the day old newspaper left outside their door. She’s good at crossword puzzles, but Lexa is better. Clarke swivels in the desk chair she sits in to look at her for a response.

Lexa turns over on the bed to lay on her stomach and props her forearms up on a pillow. She looks down, frowns, and starts to count letters on her fingers. _Recess, no. Holiday... too short, no. Furlough, no. Sabbatical... 7, 8, 9, 10 letters._ Yes.

“Sabbatical.”

Clarke spins back to the newspaper on the desk and checks to see if it fits. “Two b’s or one?”

“Two.”

“It fits.” She scribbles the letters in while Lexa gets an idea. “10-Down. Dessert in a tall glass, seven letters.”

“We should take one.”

Clarke turns back to her. “Take one what?”

“A sabbatical.” Lexa pushes herself up and brushes at the wrinkles in her shirt. “We don’t have anywhere we need to be. We could rent a car. Explore the city. Maybe go back to being us for a day instead of-”

“Lying to everyone we know?”

Lexa tries not to smile. Her predicament isn’t amusing, but Clarke somehow makes it so. “Yes, that.”

“Yeah, that actually sounds fun.” She drops the newspaper back on the desk and stands. “Where would we go?”

Lexa has an idea or two. She slides to the side of the bed and reaches for the boots she almost never wore before this trip. In fact, she almost never dresses this casually; there’s a reason she only owns two pairs of jeans. Lacing them up, she offers Clarke a sly grin. “Get dressed.”

“ _Mysterious_ ,” Clarke comments. “Alright.” Without any noticeable hesitation, she turns to her suitcase, picks a plaid shirt to wear, and strips out of the tank top she had slept in.

Lexa averts her eyes and focuses intently on her boots while Clarke changes. She knows she’s more fond of Clarke than she should be and no amount of denying that could justify her watching her in any state of undress.

They rent a sensible gray sedan that Clarke doesn’t approve of; _too boring_ , she says. Lexa makes a point of renting the gray car so she can have at least one moment of dignity where she doesn’t completely give into Clarke. It’s the practical option.

When she offers Clarke another vague non-answer to her question of _where are we going_ , she gives up asking and sits back, enjoying the view and the music on the radio. Clarke somehow knows the lyrics to every song that plays.

She finds it incredibly endearing.

-

Lexa takes her to an art museum.

It’s a beautiful place; the architecture alone could be art. The one she and Monty frequent back home is a shabby little art gallery in comparison. But this is impressive. The walls are light blue, the floors are checkerboarded hardwood, and every piece of art is mounted in an antique-looking gold frame. Clarke watches Lexa stand in front of a painting, her arms folded behind her back. There’s something about her that just belongs here, a certain serenity that Clarke has always loved about art. She sees it in Lexa, too.

Clarke steps into place next to Lexa, who offers her a small smile in return. She reviews the painting like a surgeon might look at a patient on an operating table; not with an artist’s eye but as if she’s searching for answers. Either way, she seems content to be there with Clarke.

She knows Lexa brought them here for her sake, but Clarke can’t seem to focus on the art. She can only focus on the fact that this is the first time since they’ve been here where they’ve been entirely off their guards - with no one to lie to about their relationship - and somehow, it’s the first time she’s ever felt like she’s actually dating Lexa Woods.

They drift with the crowd, walking from painting to painting beside each other.

Ever since Lexa had pulled into the parking lot, shut off the engine, and said _“I think you’ll enjoy this”,_ something had turned on a dime for her. For them.

A spontaneous trip to an art museum? That’s a smooth move. That’s _game_. That’s the kind of thing that usually gets her dates laid. And the more she thinks about the possibility - the entire concept, actually - the harder it is to not stare at Lexa and wonder how she never looked at her that way before. How did she not see her?

They’re friends. Lexa’s her friend, obviously.

It bothers her that this is the time she chooses to go there, to think about this. Now, when they’re not pretending and she can’t write it off as a natural reaction. Like their first kiss; that had been a natural reaction. She and Lexa had never kissed before. They were both good at it. _Shit happened,_ Clarke could handle that.

She can’t handle this quite as easily, but she’s no quitter. Clarke pushes the thoughts from her mind; she could always compartmentalize with the best of them. It really is a beautiful museum.

Lexa glances over at her and Clarke admits it to herself. She likes the reckless way it makes her heart skip a beat.

-

Clarke Griffin is a hypocrite.

Lexa should’ve know. She’s a stickler for rules in some aspects, even going as far as tapping a young boy on the shoulder and telling him in that kind, softspoken voice of hers that “ _You’re actually not supposed to touch the art_ ” before any of the guards can even notice he’s reached for a painting. As for the rules she doesn’t feeling like following herself, that’s a different story, apparently.

Without warning, Clarke pulls Lexa closer and whips out her phone in front of a painting that Lexa noticed her admiring twenty minutes ago. Lexa doesn’t recognize it, but it must mean something to Clarke because she switches her phone to its front facing camera and and turns them around so that the painting hangs behind them in the reflection shown in her camera app. Raising her phone in the air, Clarke grins at Lexa.

“Smile for a selfie.” She doesn’t ask, throwing her arm around Lexa with a smile of her own.

“We’re not supposed to take photos.” Lexa overlooks the distracting lack of distance between them to point to a sign on the wall. _No photographs please_ , written in delicate gold script.

Clarke rolls her eyes. “Sorry, officer, can’t I take a picture with my best friend? Come on.” And somehow that argument works on Lexa.

“Fine.”

After a beat, Clarke looks exasperated. “You actually have to smile.”

“I am smiling.” Clarke should really show her some patience. It’s not easy to do anything but keep herself in check when Clarke’s mouth is so close to her own.

No, Clarke doesn’t own her anything. This is Lexa’s predicament and Lexa’s alone.

“You’re scaring the children.”

“You don’t have to be so diffic-”

Clarke cuts her off with an unexpected kiss to her cheek. It does two things: becomes the subject of the picture Clarke snaps at the exact moment her lips press against Lexa and embarrassingly, makes Lexa blush.

“There you go,” Clarke says because Lexa must be smiling now. Clarke’s diabolical plan worked, then. “Loosen up. Think about documentaries.” Clarke snaps another picture and pulls away, studying the pictures in her phone. “We look cute.”

Lexa steals a glance. “Not cute enough to justify nearly getting kicked out for taking photos.”

Clarke Griffin may be a hypocrite, but Lexa’s a liar.

Against her better judgement, the fourteen year old inside Lexa speaks up. She points to Clarke’s phone. “Send those to me?”

Clarke’s smile grows wider. She nods. “Sure.” She turns her focus back to her phone, giving Lexa undeserved time to study the way Clarke looks.

Clarke is the kind of art that makes art museums make sense. If she could preserve every detail about her in a single painting, she would. Lexa tries to remember how Clarke looked when they were both kids. Everything about her is different now, of course. Her face used to be rounder, she had bangs, and her hair was more controlled. It hangs in loose waves today. She’s taller, but no taller than Lexa. Her face is more defined.

Clarke looks up from her phone and catches her staring, but Lexa doesn’t look away. When Clarke gives her a questioning look, Lexa only lifts her chin.

Clarke’s expression softens all of a sudden and for a fraction of a moment, she looks at her the way Lexa had been hoping she would. For just a moment, she lives in a version of their own world where Clarke feels the same pull that she does.

“What?” Clarke breaks the silence and Lexa’s hope dies with it.

“Nothing,” Lexa answers.

She won’t say it, not even if she thinks there’s a chance Clarke might say it back.

-

At the end of a day as confusing as Clarke had, she’s a little relieved to find out some things never change. Fresh out of the shower, Clarke brushes her hair while she watches Lexa do push-ups beside the bed.

Clarke rolls her eyes .”Show off.”

Lexa does a few more push-ups before she stands to her feet, brushes off her hands, and arches a single eyebrow. “You know most people don’t consider being able to do 15 push-ups a bragging right.”

Clarke drops her brush onto the desk. “Actually, most people haven’t done a push-up since high school. You’re the outlier with a nightly workout routine.”

“It’s how I stay physically fit.” She says, moving to sit on the floor. She pushes herself away from the bed far enough so that she can do a set of crunches. Such a show off. Maybe it’s the unwelcome shift in the way Clarke sees her now, but for the first time since she’s known her, Clarke actually takes the time to look at Lexa as she would a complete stranger.

Lexa’s never been hard on the eyes, but for once she’s actually appreciating how good she looks. She’s not just hot, she’s _fit_ hot. She’s _does push-ups like it’s nothing_ hot.

“I never really thought about that,” Clarke comments. She climbs onto the bed and settles against the pillows, laying on her side to watch Lexa. “I don’t exercise much.”

“How do you stay in shape?” Lexa asks between crunches.

 _Football_ is what she should say. Football is what she would say if anyone else asked. But today she can’t seem to fit Lexa in the _anybody else_ box no matter how hard she tries

“Sex, usually,” is what she actually says. And now that the line’s been crossed, she’s actively flirting with her best friend. She really knows how to burn her bridges, doesn’t she? “Lately, not so much,” she adds.

Lexa rolls her eyes. “What’s it been for you? Three months?”

“A year,” Clarke corrects her.

“A year.” Lexa repeats, her tone dripping with sarcasm. “How _agonizing_.”

“How long has it been for you?”

She’s actually curious, which is why she’s watching Lexa when she asks. So, when Lexa’s crunches stall and she drops the superiority act, Clarke notices.

“That’s not really any of your business.”

She almost laughs but decides that’s just rude. “Wow, that long?” Actually that was pretty rude, too.

Lexa sighs and sits up. “Four years.”

Clarke’s jaw drops. “Four _years_?”

“Four years.” Lexa repeats, resuming her crunches.

“I heard you stop wanting it after a long time without it, is that true?”

Lexa’s glare is murderous until her eyes land somewhere inches below Clarke’s face. She eyes the dip in Clarke’s v-neck shirt, noticeably. It actually makes her a little proud, all things considered.

“Not really.”

Clarke laughs and Lexa even smiles. “God, I’m so sorry. Do you want to have sex with me?”

 _Why the hell would she say_ _that? What does she even do if Lexa says yes?_

She doesn’t, of course.

Lexa stops working out and stands to her feet, kickstarting Clarke’s racing heart because _what if she does say yes?_ But she doesn’t. “As romantic as being propositioned out of pity is, I think I’ll have to pass. You can trust that if I wanted an active sex life, I would have one.”

Clarke breathes a sigh of relief and turns it into a soft laugh. “Alright, your loss.”

Lexa studies her for a moment, just long enough for Clarke to treat herself to the mental picture of Lexa taking her up on her offer.

She barely contains a groan. She shouldn’t have pictured that. Definitely shouldn’t have pictured that.

Lexa licks her lips and points her thumb towards the open bathroom door. “I’m going to take a shower.”

“You do that.” Clarke says, already pushing past the thought.

-

What might have been a peaceful afternoon for Raven dies suddenly as she walks down the hallways of the hotel and turns towards the sound of a grown man assaulting a machine.

It’s Bellamy, standing at a vending machine in the ice machine room. It’s a small room at the end of the hallway, no bigger than the average office. It has an ice machine, an ATM, a vending machine, and an impatient man jabbing at a button on the keypad.

Raven leans against the doorframe. “Eat your dollar?”

“And fifty cents.” Bellamy says.

“Have you tried mechanical agitation?”

Bellamy nods hesitantly but shakes his head after a moment. “No, I have no idea what that is.”

“Shake it really hard.”

“Oh.” He grips the sides of the machine and does just that until a bag of chips and a soda bottle drop. He retrieves his snack and tosses the bottle towards Raven. “On the house.”

“Thanks.” She slides it into her purse and her hand stalls on the zipper as something occurs to her. “Hey, listen... Can I ask you something?”

Bellamy shifts, looking trapped. That’s his problem, not hers.“Shoot.”

“Why are you being so harsh on Clarke?”

Bellamy tenses, fixes his eyes on the wall over Raven’s head, and locks his jaw. Raven braces herself; that’s Blake body language for _don’t._

“No bullshit, give it to me straight, Blake.” She says and hopes it works. Usually it does. “I can tell when you’re hiding something.”

Bellamy shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter, does it?”

Raven stands up straight and crosses her arms. “Maybe not to you, but it matters to me. Who are you to decide Clarke crossed a line?” She pauses and lowers her voice. “You’re her friend.”

Bellamy sighs and leans against the ice machine behind him. “You can’t tell Octavia.”

“Fine,” she says. _As if,_ she thinks.

“Before Finn left,” Bellamy runs a hand over his face and breathes out heavily. “Before he left for the Army... Clarke and him didn’t talk to you guys for weeks.”

“Sure, it was finals week.”

“Yeah, it wasn’t just finals week.” He says, aggravation dripping from each word.

Raven narrows her eyes. “What are you not telling me?”

Bellamy lets his head fall back against the ice machine and closes his eyes for a moment. “Raven...”

“ _Bellamy_. When our friend died you told us our best friend broke his heart and he shipped off to war, if there’s something you’re not telling me-”

“Look, I made a choice to protect my friend.” Bellamy snaps, his voice gruff and frustrated.

Raven scoffs. “And how are you protecting her now?”

“Did you ever think that maybe I was protecting Finn?”

His eyes are wide and Raven can tell from the way he breathes that he wants a way out of this conversation, maybe never expected to have it in the first place. She won’t let him off that easy.

Her voice softer now, she pushes for more. “So what is it? What happened? Bellamy, please.”

He stares at her for what feels like a minute, his breathing evening out as her heart rate quickens. He finally caves and nods.

“Close the door.”

-

Lexa does eventually agree to take Clarke to Bellamy’s dancing lessons. There aren’t a lot of things left for her to do until the wedding, anyway, and she can feel herself getting restless. She misses the office, spends more than enough time worrying about how Indra and Anya are keeping her affairs in order, and on top of it all: Clarke.

To keep matters simple, her life hasn’t gotten any less taxing in that department.

So, Clarke wears her down again, and they slip into a room on the first floor of the hotel. It’s empty with the exception of a small crowd, a few chairs, a table, and a boombox; all shoved into one corner of the room to make up a dancefloor. It’s actually quite bigger than Lexa had pictured it.

Lexa feels a familiar flare of animosity towards Bellamy when they greet him and he tenses up at the sight of her. Not Clarke, but Lexa, who as far as she can think hasn’t done anything to anger him, much less has she had a full conversation with him before. Upon seeing Clarke, the tension escapes him and he frowns. He seems apologetic.

“Hey. Is Raven coming?”

Bellamy shakes his head. “No, she couldn’t make it.” He delays for a moment and then with wide eyes, asks Clarke, “Can we talk for a second?”

He takes Clarke aside for a few minutes, just long enough for Lexa’s Mother to find her. Had she known her Mother was coming maybe Lexa wouldn’t have agreed to come. She has nothing against her Mother, really, she can just be... a handful. Like she’s being right now, when all Lexa wants to do is keep an eye on Clarke and all her Mother wants to do is chat.

She doesn’t listen to her, which is rude, but her curiosity gets the best of her as she watches Clarke and Bellamy have a hushed conversation. Her Mother prattles on, talking about one thing or another, and Lexa almost curses at herself when she nods at what she realizes moments too late was an invitation to something. Her lack of courtesy coming back to bite her, no doubt.

She decides not to worry, because after a minute, Clarke gives Bellamy a hug and comes to find Lexa again, just as music starts to play from the boombox in the corner. The dance instructor isn’t late anymore and Clarke is grabbing her by the waist.

“Shall we?” Clarke doesn’t wait for an answer. She tugs Lexa towards her and intertwines their fingers. “Like this,” she says, lifting Lexa’s hand to the proper height and placing Lexa’s hand on her side. She slides her own hand further until it rests on Lexa’s lower back. Lexa imitates her position and chastises herself. She’s taken dancing lessons before, she shouldn’t be acting like she doesn’t know what she’s doing.

They get into a rhythm, mostly side to side and forward and back, but every other paired up couple in the room does the same, getting a feel for how their partner moves.

“What did Bellamy have to say?” Lexa asks.

“He apologized for not being on my side.” Clarke shifts her focus from over Lexa’s shoulder to Lexa, meeting her eyes but not bothering to put any distance between them. “He’s just feeling bad for having to defend Octavia. I get it. He’s her brother, it makes sense.” Clarke turns her head again and they dance a little closer now, the side of Clarke’s head falling against the side of Lexa’s like two puzzle pieces. “Besides, he’s always been there for me from the start. He doesn’t owe me any apologies.”

That logic adds up to Lexa, but something about the apology doesn’t. It’s none of her business, though.

“I thought he’d ask me why I’m still here.”

Lexa nods, then gives in to her own curiosity. “Why are you still here?”

Clarke meets her eyes again. “Maybe I’m hoping something will change.”

“I hope so, too.” Lexa says, willing herself to not wish Clarke was talking about something other than her relationship with Octavia.

They dance for an uneventful while. The instructor Bellamy hired is named Charles and he doesn’t have a particularly impressive work ethic. For the most part, he just wastes time on his cell phone and walks around the room correcting people’s posture. Clarke gets her hand placement corrected once and then mocks Charles thoroughly for it once he’s out of earshot. Lexa mimics the words her Father used to say to her: _Mockery is not the product of a strong mind, Clarke._ She regrets it when Clarke serves her a challenging glare and then surprises her with a twirl that Charles praises.

They aren’t the first dancing lessons Lexa’s ever had, but they’re certainly the most fun. It’s been a long time since she’s had a partner to dance with.

She tries not to watch Clarke too much, but every now and then she can’t help but look at her. Sometimes she’s looking back, usually she isn’t. Clarke never shows any signs of discomfort at being so close to her, but that doesn’t give Lexa much to work with. She wishes she could understand Clarke. She would give anything for just two seconds inside her head-

Without warning, Clarke kisses her.

It’s incredibly short-lived and due to its unexpected nature, nearly taken for granted.

Nearly.

Clarke is kissing her, so Lexa does what she’s wanted to all day. All week. She kisses her back and almost instantly, Clarke pulls back like she’s been burned.

Lexa can tell Clarke is just as shocked as she is. “Your Mom was looking,” Clarke says, stumbling over the excuse and regaining her composure much faster than Lexa is.

Clarke looks like instead of kissing her back, Lexa had whispered a secret to her. No matter how calm she might appear, her wide eyes give her away.

“It’s okay. I don’t mind.” Lexa feels a wave of embarrassment wash over her. She should have stopped at _it’s okay._

“You don’t?”

Lexa knows she doesn’t. In fact, she’d rather Clarke stopped asking questions so that she could kiss her again. “No, I don’t.”

All Clarke offers in the way of answers is a nod. She settles back into their rhythm and rests her head on Lexa’s shoulder. They both know Charles will undoubtedly snap at them for breaking posture, but Lexa doesn’t say anything and neither does Clarke. Their closeness feels heavier now and Lexa lets it wash over her as they sway together.

Maybe she _should_ let herself hope for change.

-

 **Raven (5:15pm):** call me

 **O (5:16pm):** whats wrong?

 **Raven (5:16pm):** it’s about clarke

_5:18pm Incoming Call._

-

When Lexa gets a text message from her Mother with a time and place, it takes her a full minute to remember what it could be for.

Right. The invitation. She’d been so distracted keeping an eye on Clarke when she was talking with Bellamy that she had absentmindedly agreed to... something. Dinner, apparently.

It doesn’t take much convincing for her to get Clarke to agree to come. Clarke - who has been acting just as strange as Lexa feels - is happy to have something to do besides sit idly in their hotel room and bask in their own discomfort.

Neither of them are sure when it happened, but somehow, they had crossed a line. It’s an unspoken and concentrated feeling between them. So, for the first time in years, Lexa looks forward to spending as much time as possible with her Mother.

The invitation turns out to be for a dinner with her Mother and a few of her friends. Possibly relatives of the bride, Lexa doesn’t have a clue. Her Mother introduces them, but for the most part the information goes in one ear and out the other with Clarke’s hand resting casually on her lower back as names and greetings are exchanged.

Lexa is glad they opted for slightly more formal wear. She certainly feels more at home in a silk button up and dress pants and Clarke looks... well, she’s wearing a blue blouse underneath a white blazer that Lexa suspects she had been saving for the wedding. She looks beautiful.

Most of the evening is nothing but soccer mom show and tell. She’s boasting to her friends, showing off her successful daughter and her successful relationship, which Lexa can’t blame her for. Despite her Mother being everything a suburban mother wants to be, Lexa had never really given her the chance to be one. She had never joined any soccer teams her Mother could coach. She had always been her Father’s daughter; even from a young age she had been more like the strict, well mannered politician he had been and wanted her to be. So she can’t blame her Mother, but she can’t help but feel irritated.

Not only is she a trophy daughter, but she’s a trophy daughter for all the wrong reasons. She wonders if her Mother even knows how many people rely on her in her company. It doesn’t seem to matter to her quite as much as the fact that Lexa has a beautiful girlfriend.

That’s the source of her irritation, really. She’s not even her girlfriend. Maybe this entire night would bother her less if she didn’t have to hope for a moment of public affection from Clarke. Maybe this entire night would bother her less if instead she could follow Clarke when she excused herself to go to the restroom and kiss her senseless against the bathroom sink.

Her improper thoughts snap her out of her daze and bring her back to earth, where Clarke is stealing food off her plate and holding a conversation with a woman in a pink sweater.

“It’s such a shame about the invitation mix up.” The woman says behind the gin and tonic in her hand.

Lexa’s Mother frowns. “What invitation mix up?”

“Oh, there was some unfortunate business with the caterers, a few people had to forfeit their plus ones.” She looks at Clarke when she says it, and everyone at the table suddenly understands.

Lexa grits her teeth. What a weak excuse for a lie. She hates the passive aggressive nature of people like her Mother’s friends. Cowards, all of them.

Clarke handles the moment with grace. “It’s fine, actually. Kind of a bummer I’ll be missing the open bar, though.” That brings about a round of laughs from the women. Lexa’s heart rate nearly doubles when Clarke reaches for her hand and laces their fingers together on the table. “I’m just glad to be here, it’s been a lot of fun.”

Her Mother grins. “Lexa, I don’t know what you did to get a girl like this, but if I had someone so fond of me, I’d never let them go.”

Lexa wouldn’t either.

Clarke squeezes her hand. “She’s fond of me too.” She sighs to add a flare of drama to the moment. “Even if she almost never says it.” She’s baiting her and it’s working.

Lexa has her eyes on Clarke, but she can hear everyone contributing some lighthearted _ooooh’s_ to the moment, just loving Clarke’s act.

“I have no trouble saying it,” Lexa almost whispers, but speaks up for the sake of their audience. “I’m very fond of you, Clarke.”

Clarke meets her eyes and takes a deep breath, looking at her like maybe this is another line they shouldn’t cross. But when she squeezes Lexa’s hand, she can’t help but cross it. It breaks Lexa. She crumbles beneath the weight of her own feelings.

She says it.

“I’ve always been fond of you. You’re not the kind of person that I could ever know without loving.”

Lexa keeps her breathing measured, trying not to break the moment as she studies Clarke for a reaction. All she gets is a softness in the way that Clarke looks at her and a moment to realize that Clarke is leaning in.

Clarke kisses her. It’s gentle and hesitant and Lexa feels like she's kissing a different Clarke and Clarke is kissing a different Lexa. There's something unfamiliar about it. Her lips are uncertain against Lexa’s, pressing into her and sliding over her bottom lip as if she’s never done it before. The kiss isn’t heated or fake; it’s curious. It’s different. It feels like it matters.

When they pull away, Clarke doesn’t move back. In the background, Lexa can hear the women around them making comments about one thing or another, but she doesn’t have the energy to care about anything but Clarke’s forehead resting against hers.

When they finally do separate, it’s the way that Clarke squeezes her thigh beneath the table that breaks Lexa’s heart. Of course.

It still wasn’t real.

-

They make small talk on the way back to their hotel after dinner. Mostly talk about the women they met. Lexa has story after story about the ridiculous cast of characters her Mother has called friends in the past, and any other day, Clarke might love to hear them, but today isn’t that day. Tonight, all she can think about is how she’s fallen for her best friend.

Nice job, Griffin.

She knows Lexa can feel that something has changed, it weighs heavy on the both of them, especially after that kiss. But that doesn’t mean she feels the same way.

It’s not impossible - Clarke is hot, she assumes Lexa has an interest in hot women. Emotionally, well, she’s kind of a disaster. That’s never been a problem for Lexa in the past; she’s got her own issues. It’s what makes them feel safe together. They share a very familiar kind of loneliness.

After a while, neither of them bother to keep up the small talk. They walk in silence until they reach the hotel lobby. Clarke pushes a button to call the elevator and Lexa is the first to change the subject.

“What will you do when the wedding’s over?”

Clarke glances at her. “I have no idea. Move on. Give up.” In a way, she’s still talking about Octavia. In a way, she’s not. “I only have so many chances left.”

“Well, what do you want?”

“Nothing.” She meets Lexa’s eyes as the elevator doors open. “To know where I stand.”

They step inside the empty elevator and Clarke pushes the button for their floor.

“You should ask me.” Lexa says, sounding much calmer than Clarke feels. The doors slide shut and Clarke takes a deep breath.

“Ask you what?”

“The question you’ve wanted to ask me since the restaurant.”

She’s right. She knows her well. Clarke turns to face her. “The thing you said about the kind of person I am to you. Did you mean it?”

Lexa’s eyes flit across Clarke’s face like she’s searching for something. Clarke knows the feeling etched into Lexa’s expression. Hope.

“Did you want me to?”

Clarke steadies herself and nods.

Lexa laughs. It’s a soft sound, more of a sudden sigh of relief than anything, and then she's just standing there, watching her for something. A cue, maybe. Clarke fights a smile.

_What now?_

"Then, yes. I meant every word of it." Lexa takes a deep breath. "Is that good or bad?"

"What do you think?" Clarke moves closer to Lexa, tentatively closing the space between them and hooking her index finger around Lexa's. Their thumbs brush against each other. It's a small gesture, one Clarke doesn't recognize until they're doing it. They used to do this as kids. She meets her eyes. 

Lexa looks down at their hands and lets out a soft, nervous laugh. "I think I wish I could read your thoughts. What are you thinking about, Clarke?"

"This." 

She doesn't let herself overthink it. She could, but she won't. Clarke slides her hand into Lexa's hair and holds the back of her neck as their lips meet. Clarke thinks maybe Lexa wants this as badly as she does because in the same moment, Lexa's hand comes up to rest against the side of her face; softly holding her in place, both cupping her cheek and resting against her hair. The kiss is short, but Clarke can't help but pull back to see the look on Lexa's face.

It's one of those moments where Clarke feels overwhelmed by how much Lexa matters to her. She looks at Clarke like she's stepped out of reality with her into a world where this happens for them, a world where she and her best friend fall for each other and nobody gets hurt. Clarke can't remember the last time something worked out for her and she knows Lexa shares her same fears, but it's happening for her now and the way she feels is reflected in the way Lexa is looking at her. For Clarke, Lexa wears her heart on her sleeve.

Clarke kisses her again, deeper this time and for no other reason than the fact that she can. Lexa's hands frame her face and she kisses back just as passionately. It's overwhelming and it's not enough and it's that kiss Clarke knows she'll be thinking about for the rest of her life -

It’s also rather short-lived.

The elevator door slides open with a soft _ding_ and they part, breathing heavier than before. Clarke doesn't have time to think about how much she wishes she could Christmas tree the button panel and stay in this elevator with Lexa all night because when Lexa's eyes glance over Clarke's shoulder, she collects herself and stands taller. Clarke whips her head around to see the person leaning against the wall in front of the elevator doors.

It’s Octavia, leaning back on the wall with her foot propped against it. She has her hands in her pockets, looking defeated.

Lexa nods at her in greeting. “Octavia.” The shift from a nearly giddy Lexa to a proper, business-like one is jarring. Somewhere in the back of her mind, Clarke remembers that Lexa is technically Octavia’s boss. If things could get more awkward than they already are, that would do it.

Octavia ignores her, turns her attention to Clarke and that's when it hits her that Octavia wasn’t just standing there. She’s been waiting.

“Hey.” She pushes herself off of the wall. “You still want that drink?”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> pour one out for my girl octavia.... aint nothin wrong with her she's just probably a dead woman walking for interrupting that precious moment


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> listen..... i know it's been a year....... please accept this update as a peace offering

“So that’s it, huh? You think I just woke up one morning and decided to end it with him? You think I got out of bed and thought _hey_! Today seems like a great day to destroy my five year relationship. Maybe I’ll tell him he means nothing to me!” Clarke shouts, letting years of guilt and one-sided rehearsals of the same conversation spill into her words. “Hell, maybe I’ll even tell him that I slept with his best friend. Is that what you think happened?”

They had been going back and forth like this for twenty minutes now in the empty hotel bar. Empty perhaps because it’s getting late, or perhaps because of the two girls at the counter getting into a screaming match.

As it turned out, Octavia’s idea of talking was more emotionally interactive than Clarke had pictured it. It had started calm. Civil. Octavia had told her that Raven suggested this and Clarke had made a mental note to thank her.

Twenty minutes later, maybe not.

Raven knew something that Octavia didn’t, and Octavia made it clear that she didn’t appreciate that. She had said something about Raven asking for Clarke’s side of the story, telling her that if what she knew was right, then Clarke would just have to be honest and it would come out.

Truth be told, Clarke was lost. She was still dazed from the kiss with Lexa. The _real_ kiss. And part of her really wanted to tell Octavia that she could take a raincheck but she would never forgive herself if she did. So she had let Lexa go back to their room with nothing more than a kiss on the cheek and a small wave before she gave herself over to Octavia.

So, it really had started out civil. And then someone had said the wrong thing; probably Clarke. So, here they were. She and Octavia had always been so defensive when they fought, it was a predictable outcome. The only two people who could ever calm them down were Raven and, well-

Finn.

“You’re so full of shit, Clarke. That’s what _happened_. Look, I don’t know why you did it and I honestly don’t care anymore. ‘Cause you were nothing but a selfish bitch. You ditched Finn in a heartbeat and then you told him to go join the military, ‘cause I bet you just couldn’t wait to get rid of him, right? Our best friend who just got _too_ boring for you, you had to ship him off. And hey! Maybe if he joins, someone will kill him.” She shrugs. “Problem solved.”

“Are you kidding me? What the hell is wrong with you? I wasn’t even the one who told him to join the military, Octavia. That was _Bellamy’s_ idea." 

“What the hell is wrong with _me_?” Octavia scoffs. “I’m not the one who _broke_ our best friend. And don’t even try to put this on Bellamy, you’ve dragged him into this enough already.”

“Octavia, it wasn’t that simple!” She snaps. “I didn’t love him! I just...” Clarke lets her shoulders fall and even forgives herself for crying when she’s trying to be taken seriously. “I just didn’t love him anymore. So I left him-”

“You _destroyed_ him.”

“I had to. He stalked me for two weeks! He wouldn’t take no for an answer. He was at my doorstep eight days in a row. He threw away his savings, bought me diamonds and rings, he proposed ten times, he told me he loved me so many times I lost count. It was like he was Finn but... unhinged. He thought it was some big romantic gesture, but I almost got a restraining order. Whatever Bellamy told you about it, it doesn’t even come close to how he was-”

Octavia shakes her head, her eyes wide. She looks like a deer in the headlights. “Bellamy never told me anything like that happened. He stalked you?”

Clarke furrows her eyebrows. “For weeks.”

“ _Bellamy_ told him to join the military?”

“Bellamy _told_ you all this.”

Octavia shakes her head and locks her jaw. “He never told me a damn thing about any of this.”

“What?”

“Clarke, if you’re lying, I swear to God-”

“He never told you he stalked me?” Clarke’s blood runs cold as she thinks back to everything Bellamy had ever said and done to make Clarke feel okay about losing Octavia and Raven. To help her accept that nothing was going to change. To help her move on. And not once had she had a chance to tell Octavia and Raven what happened.

Raven had never even asked. Bellamy had told her not to because it would open up a can of worms that nobody wanted reopened. That’s what he’d said for years now. And he was angry when she came here with Lexa, apologetic to her since, and nervous at every turn since then.

Clarke feels fury settle into her chest and she fixes her eyes on Octavia. “So what _did_ he tell you?”

-

When a boy that Clarke doesn’t recognize opens Bellamy’s hotel room door to find two angry women staring back at him, his face pales in record time.

“Can I help you?”

“Yeah, is my _brother_ here?” Octavia nearly growls. If Clarke wasn’t so furious, she’d feel bad for this poor guy who answered the door. He steps aside to let them in and then discreetly takes his cue to leave when they march past him.

“Bellamy.” They both say his name at the same time when they find him sitting at his desk. He shuts his laptop and stands up. He looks nervous, and has good reason to be.

“Octavia-” He starts, raising a hand defensively.

Clarke cuts him off. “You never told her why I left Finn.”

He swallows and shifts his weight from one leg to the other.

“ _Bellamy_.” Octavia steps forward and scares him into speaking with a single word.

“I had my reasons.”

Octavia scoffs and Clarke shakes her head. “You-” She has to take a second to even try to process what’s happening. This is real. “You had your reasons?”

Clarke coils back as reality hits her. He was never on her side. She steps back until her knees hits the edge of the bed and she sits. “No. _Not_ good enough.”

“Are you serious?” Octavia is livid and for that Clarke is grateful. Her own anger is overwhelming, but she can’t find it in her to be as confrontational as Octavia’s being. But she doesn’t need to be. “He stalked her and you didn’t bother to tell me?”

“I had my reasons!” he bellows, getting defensive. Predictable Blake behavior, but not even Octavia gets as unmoving and infuriating as Bellamy does when he’s sure that he’s right.

“Well, I wanna hear ‘em, big brother. Tell me all these great reasons you had for ruining my relationship with my best friend.”

“Finn was your best friend too!” Bellamy’s voice drops with a slump of his shoulders. “And he was _my_ best friend.” He takes a deep breath. “I would have told you, but Clarke left us. _She_ would have told you if she hadn’t left. But he died, O. His life _ended_. And I wasn’t about to spit on his grave-”

“So, you threw Clarke under the bus? You knew she was leaving, so you told me she broke him.” Octavia shakes her head in disgust. “You told me she was the one who told him to go into the military, but it was you, wasn’t it?”

Bellamy just stands there with his hands on his hips, staring her down. He breaks a moment of tense silence with a nod.

Octavia rushes him and shoves hard against his chest, pushing him back. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“I was protecting you! I was protecting Finn’s memory-”

“What about protecting Clarke?”

“Clarke could handle herself. Finn was dead and I made a choice.” Bellamy points to the ground, defending himself. “A choice that I stand by. I thought you’d get over it, I thought you guys would be friends again. He was our best friend. It would have ruined you, O.”

Clarke still hasn’t let herself cry, but she nearly does when she looks up at him from the bed. She forces a smile and drops it a second later when it hits her how alone she’s actually been all these years. “So you let me ruin myself instead?”

Bellamy hesitates. He shifts again. “Clarke, if you think there’s anyone on Earth that I care about more than my sister, then you don’t know a damn thing about me.”

“Well, then you know what?” Octavia asks him, getting in his space again. “I don’t know a damn thing about you, ‘cause I think there is someone.”

He shakes his head. “Who?”

“You.” She stares him down until Bellamy backs up a step, reeling from the hurt. That’s a low blow coming from his baby sister.

“I used to think you’d do anything for us. Joke’s on me, you’re just a selfish dick.” Octavia shifts her attention. “Come on, Clarke.”

-

They get the drink that Octavia promised her. Clarke spends the first half hour feeling emotionally drained. She’s angry at Bellamy. Resentful and feeling betrayed over trusting him. Happy to have Octavia sitting across from her with a smile on her face, laughing and telling her some story about something stupid she did in college as she eats an olive off a toothpick.

(The alcohol hit her system before it hit Clarke’s. Or, maybe she’s just tired of being angry.)

And then there’s that other, much deeper feeling of content. That feeling is all Lexa Woods and she’s entirely taken over Clarke’s mind. The second she’s no longer actively fighting with Octavia or hating Bellamy, she gets a chance to remember what happened less than an hour ago. When they step into the elevator to go back down to the bar, Clarke’s runs her hand along the railing on the wall and remembers standing there with Lexa, hands in her hair and lips hot and wanting against her own.

Clarke suggests to Octavia that they invite Raven out to celebrate, but not right away.

“Maybe in ten minutes?” She asks, trying not to sound like she just wants to sneak away to kiss Lexa some more.

That’s exactly what she wants to do.

Octavia just grins, seeing right through her. “I’ll call her, tell her to meet us at the bar on Park Street.”

“Great.”

“I should talk to Lincoln, too. With everything that happened tonight...” Octavia shakes her head. She stands up and throws on her jacket as she talks. “I just need to talk to him. I know it’s cheesy as shit, but he’s my rock, you know?”

“I know.”

Octavia almost turns to leave but Clarke stops her.

“Hey.” She stands in front of her and hesitates. It’s been _so_ long and they’re not the same women they were the last time they were friends, but seeing Octavia just standing there, half a smile on her face that’s just for Clarke... She realizes just how much it means to have her back.

And all at once Clarke feels tears start to fall. “I missed you,” she says through tears.

Octavia doesn’t miss a beat. She pulls Clarke into a tight hug and buries her face in her hair. “Missed you too, sister.” She clings to her as Clarke lets out a shaky breath, crying out of relief. She’s less embarrassed by how emotional she’s getting when she hears Octavia sniffling against her shoulder and they readjust, holding each other more securely.

They pull apart from each other and laugh. “Didn’t mean to sob on you here.” Octavia says, stroking Clarke’s arm up and down to calm her.

“I’m just glad you’re here at all.”

They both wipe at their eyes and laugh at how absurd everything feels all of a sudden and with that, Clarke’s night turns on a dime. Despite Bellamy, despite their entire history, despite how much she’s had Finn thrown in her face tonight, she feels lighter than she has in years.

-

That’s how she feels when she pulls her key card from the door handle and steps into her room to find Lexa typing away at her computer.

She looks up at Clarke and frowns.

“Are you alright?” Lexa stands from the desk and meets her in the middle of the room. She pushes a few strands of hair from Clarke’s face and she won’t lie; it leaves her heart racing.

“I’m more than alright.”

Lexa blinks at her. When her eyes drop to Clarke’s lips and back up, they both grin.

She kisses her.

Lexa’s hands slide over her hips to pull her closer as Clarke wraps her arms around Lexa’s shoulders. And she must not have seen it coming, that’s Clarke’s fault for having no patience tonight, because Lexa’s breathing is uneven and hitched. She pulls back to turn her head and kiss her again, drawing in air and breathing against her mouth. Clarke tries not to smile so much that she ruins the kiss, but it takes real effort. Lexa’s enthusiastic and she wants her. When they go home, she gets to keep her.

When they pull apart because Lexa really needs to breathe, Clarke rests her forehead against Lexa’s.

“I’ve wanted to do that all night.”

“It’s only been forty-five minutes.”

Clarke grins. “You’ve been watching the clock.”

“Just a little.” She steps back just enough so that she can really look at her. Lexa runs a hand through Clarke’s hair and it soothes her. “How was it?”

Clarke breathes out slowly. “Terrible. Also kind of amazing.” Clarke finally pulls herself away so that she can take off her jacket. “We fought, made up, then we fought Bellamy, made up some more. He’s Public Enemy Number One now, you should know.”

Lexa smiles. “I’m not sure I can keep up. You got your friend back, though, right?”

“Yeah, I did.” God, that feels good to say.

“I’m so happy for you, Clarke.”

Clarke reaches for her hand and she takes it. “Thank you. I wouldn’t have gotten this far without you.”

“Do you want to tell me about it?”

Clarke nods. “Later.”

“Why later?” Lexa asks like maybe she’s hoping for an answer that involves very little talking. Clarke really wishes she could give that to her. What she wouldn’t give to pull her by the hand, kiss her senseless, and maybe do some very inappropriate things to her on their incredibly uncomfortable couch.

Clarke whines in the back of her throat at the thought. “Octavia and Raven and I are gonna go out for drinks, I only have a few minutes here.”

Lexa’s face falls, but she recovers quickly and enthusiastically. “Go. You miss them.”

“I do. Thank you again.” She pulls her by the hand into a hug. Lexa falls into it quicker than she had expected. Her hands come up to cling to Clarke’s shoulders over her back and she squeezes tight.

“You’re welcome,” she says against Clarke’s neck.

When Clarke pulls away she has to force herself to not get distracted by Lexa’s closeness again. She shakes her head. “I just need to change first.”

Lexa nods and respectfully sits back down at her computer, facing away from Clarke. God, she’s a keeper.

Clarke quickly rifles through her clothes and picks a pair of jeans, a bright red blouse, and some matching heels. She feels good tonight. She wants to look good too. As she slips out of her pants and into her jeans, she turns to Lexa.

“It’s such a weight off my chest to have her back, you know? Like I can breathe again.”

“Old friends have a way of saving you.” Lexa says, keeping her eyes trained on her computer.

Clarke smiles at her. “I just can’t wait for things to be normal again. I’ve carried this crazy guilt for years now. And I mean, I know that I have friends but... not _them_. Not Raven and Octavia.”

Lexa doesn’t say anything, so she continues.

“I’m just glad I can get back to how it used to be. How it’s supposed to be.” She takes her shirt off and glances down at the tattoo on her collarbone. The same one Raven and Octavia have. She puts on the blouse with a smile on her face.

“I’m happy for you, Clarke.” That’s her cue to leave. Lexa’s heart isn’t in it when she speaks, sounding forced as she says the words, which probably means she’s distracted by something on her computer.

“How do I look?” She asks, putting her hands on her hips.

Lexa looks up finally. She clears her throat and offers her a small smile. “You look beautiful. Have fun tonight.”

Clarke almost kisses her again, but Lexa breaks eye contact almost immediately and the moment passes. She grabs her purse and settles for a goodbye wave.

They’ll have plenty of time for kissing later, anyway.  
-  
As the door clicks shut behind Clarke, a weight settles over Lexa that she doesn’t understand. It’s not a reaction to Clarke or Octavia or the wedding. It’s not work-related anxiety. It’s not about Clarke finally reciprocating her feelings; she’s over the moon about that. And still, there’s a heaviness clinging to her that she can’t seem to shake.

She runs her hands over her face and focuses back on her computer screen. She skims through e-mail after e-mail from her bosses and employees. Maybe it is work-related anxiety, after all. She’s never been away from work this long. Her job is secure, of course. She has more sick days and vacation days saved up than anyone with a social life should.

How long has it been since she had a social life? It’s a strange moment when she realizes that she has one now, she has ever since Clarke crashed back into her life and woke her up.

But seeing Octavia again must have reminded Lexa of how they should be treating each other as employee and employer, not - well, she supposes they aren’t really anything outside of that. They have a mutual friend in Clarke.

Lexa swallows and takes a deep breath. All of a sudden she doesn’t want to think about this anymore.

She opens an e-mail from Titus and scans it for any particularly urgent phrases. She finds one. _Need to speak with Roan North and ensure he won’t withdraw his support._ She reads through the rest of the message for useful information but doesn’t find much that she hasn’t already made herself familiar with. Titus is an anxious fool, always treating her like a naive child who doesn’t understand the ramifications of the decisions she makes for the company and their various projects. Most of the e-mail is a waste of her time to read.

If she lets him arrange a meeting with North, he’ll only waste his time too. They could lose their most important investor.

She sends out a quick reply, opens a new tab to search for available flights, and doesn’t stop to ask herself why she breathes a sigh of relief when she finds one.

-

Clarke doesn’t come back. Even when Lexa wakes up the next morning, she’s nowhere to be found. She paws at the cold, empty half of their shared bed where Clarke should be for a moment before she remembers that she left to spend time with her friends.

Maybe that’s the source of her discomfort. She just misses her. Makes sense. She always misses her, but everything’s changing now. She wishes Clarke was here so they could change together, too.

Her phone vibrates against the nightstand before her mind can linger from longing to envy.

 **Clarke G. (7:10am):** _hey_  
**Clarke G. (7:10am):** _i crashed in raven’s room last night. we got in late, i didn’t want to wake you.  
_ **Clarke G. (7:10am):** _i missed you last night_

Lexa doesn’t fight the smile that those five words force from her. She scrolls past this morning’s texts from Clarke to see the last thing that she texted Lexa; the picture she took of them at the art museum.

She doesn’t allow herself to glance at it often, but when she does, she realizes it’s quickly becoming her favorite picture.

 **Clarke G. (7:11am):** _meet us downstairs for breakfast?_

She wants her to meet her friends. All at once Lexa feels like she’s doing the wrong thing.

But all at once, she thinks this reason to run might be a godsend.  
-

Breakfast is hangover food for Octavia and Raven. Clarke managed to not get nearly as drunk as they had. She’s saving that for the bachelorette party that she’s officially been invited to as of 2am last night.

“How do I look?” Raven asks, looking up from her purse as she slips on a ridiculous pair of sunglasses.

Clarke chuckles. “ _Stylish_.”

Octavia just groans from where she has her head buried in her leather jacket on the table.

“Fuck both of you,” Raven says definitively. “The sun’s 800% too bright, these are staying on.”

“Whatever works for you.” Clarke stabs at her waffles and swirls them through the strawberry sauce on her plate before she shoves them in her mouth. When she glances around, she spots Lexa just past the checkout desk. She has her hand on the bag thrown over her shoulder. A packed bag.

Clarke frowns. “Guys, I’ll be right back.” She drops her fork and slips out of the booth behind their table to catch up with Lexa.

When she sees her, Lexa stands straight and blinks a few times. “Clarke.”

“Hey. Going somewhere?” It’s an innocently asked question but her words are laced with genuine concern.

Lexa purses her lips and nods. “Unfortunately.”

Her heart drops like a stone. “Why? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” Lexa shakes her head subtly. “There’s a meeting I need to be at. If I don’t go we could lose one of our investors.”

Clarke furrows her eyebrows and steps closer. She’s worried, Lexa can’t blame her for that. “You didn’t know about this last night?”

“Not until you left.”

Lexa looks down at her watch, but Clarke sees that for what it is. An excuse to look away.

“Lexa, did I do something?”

She meets her eyes again. “Of course not. It’s just work.”

“Do you want to come sit with Raven and Octavia and I for a few minutes?”

She shakes her head. “I’m not sure I have time for breakfast. My plane leaves soon. I’ll only be a few days, I won’t miss the wedding.”

Clarke can’t help but frown. Something’s wrong, but Lexa’s comforting smile is just convincing enough to leave Clarke doubting herself.

“I’ll miss you,” she says with a pout. Clarke hooks her index finger around Lexa’s and tugs.

“I’ll be back before you know it.”

She nods. Something still feels off. Clarke meets her eyes. They’re soft and there’s something akin to longing in them.

Clarke steps closer and kisses her. The drop of her mouth and the small gasp Lexa lets out gives her away. The kiss is welcome. She kisses back.

Lexa presses her mouth hard against Clarke’s. Her kiss is firm. Present, but not characteristically gentle. Lexa doesn’t melt into her the way that Clarke’s come to crave.

Something’s wrong, but Lexa doesn’t give her time to ask what. She pulls back, readjusts the bag on her shoulder and with a hand on the back of her head, presses a quick kiss to Clarke’s forehead.

And then she’s gone.  
-  
Without Lexa to keep her company and with the wedding just around the corner, Clarke throws herself into bachelorette party planning with Raven.

It’s nothing short of a fantastic affair. While Lincoln’s party is probably going to consist of a regular boys’ night at the bar to watch the game, Raven refuses to settle for anything less than the best night of their lives.

A month ago, this party had been Bellamy’s responsibility. He’d begrudgingly handed over the reins after the fight they had. Clarke is still too angry at him to feel bad for the way he got kicked out of his own sister’s wedding. Serves him right.

This was Raven’s party now. Hers and Clarke’s to plan, and no offense to Bellamy, but their last minute ideas were already ten times better than anything he had planned.

The theme was _End of the World_. Anything they’d do if the world was going to end tomorrow, they’d do tonight. At the risk of sounding full of herself, Clarke has to admit that she and Raven really outdid themselves. This party was gonna kick ass.

“Okay.” Raven flips open her iPad and props it up against it’s case. “Bellamy sent me the invitation list. I asked O who she wanted at the party and we can cut this list in half if we need to.”

“Do it,” Clarke says. She crosses off another item off the legal pad in front of her. ~~Ten or less~~. “The limos seat ten, but eight would be more comfortable. We should keep the group as small as that in case we do something crazy like decide to get breakfast in Canada and the party needs to go mobile.”

Raven’s eyes light up. “Don’t go giving me any ideas, Griffin.” But she nods and scrolls through the invitation list. “Okay, so you, me, Octavia, Harper and Zoe. Luna. Niylah, who I actually haven’t met yet, but I think she’s a co-worker.” Raven stops reading the list and laughs to herself.

“What?”

“Well, Bellamy and his friend were gonna make ten people, but Octavia doesn’t want him there, so now there’s only one guy.”

Clarke sits up. “Who’s the guy?”

“John Murphy. He’s Bellamy’s friend, but he’s actually pretty alright and Octavia wants him there. I think you’ll like him.” She laughs again. “He’s gonna get a kick out of being the only guy at a party full of girls.”

“Alright, so eight people?”

“Yup.”

“Send them the invite. Make sure they know it’s BYOB ‘til at least stage three of the party.”

Raven nods.

“Dress should be more formal than casual,” Clarke adds before either of them forget. “Just in case we want to go somewhere nice, but nothing too uncomfortable.”

“Got it.”

Raven starts to type out the invite on her iPad and Clarke settles back in her chair, scratching off the last line of her to-do list. Not half bad for a day’s work. It’s nice having her friends back. _Really_ having them back. If only she had all of them.

Lexa left more than a day ago, but she still can’t shake that nagging feeling that Lexa left for a reason. Maybe she screwed it all up already. Maybe she doesn’t feel the same way as Clarke does.

Clarke had called her that morning, but Lexa hadn’t picked up the phone. Maybe she was in a meeting. To her credit, Lexa had texted back an hour later. A message that Clarke still hadn’t responded to in an effort to seem aloof and content with their sudden lack of communication. But she was caving fast.

She misses her.

Clarke pulls out her phone to text back.

 **Lexa (9:05am):** _How’s it going?_  
**Clarke G.** **(12:12pm):** _im holding down the fort alright  
_**Clarke G**. **(12:12pm):** _i forgot how crazy raven and o are. they haven’t grown up a bit_

Lexa’s response comes quicker than she expected. It calms Clarke down. Maybe it’s all in her head.

 **Lexa (12:15pm):** _I can only imagine._  
**Clarke G.** **(12:15pm):** _almost makes me miss your stupid documentaries_  
**Clarke G. (12:15pm):** _and you_  
**Lexa (12:20pm):** _Miss you too._  
-

Octavia is back in her life now, but it’s Raven that Clarke spends most of her time with.

Clarke passes Raven the bag of trail mix they’re sharing and shifts against her bed. They’re both lying on their backs, staring at the ceiling and making up for lost time. She’s also keeping Clarke company. With Octavia preoccupied with Lincoln and without Lexa around, loneliness is hitting her hard.

Clarke turns her head. “Can I ask you something?”

Raven tosses back a few pieces of trail mix and nods.

“You and Bellamy... did anything ever happen there?”

She hands the bag back. “Couple times. Probably won’t happen anymore now that I just feel like punching him in the dick every time I see him.” Raven looks at her. “You think you’ll forgive him?”

Clarke sighs. “Probably.” Truth is, he was there for her a lot. She can’t help but feel like he’s still worth forgiving.

“Can I ask you something else?”

Raven nods.

“Why’d you forgive _me_? Bellamy never told you the truth either.”

Raven looks up at the ceiling and breathes in deep. “I figured I didn’t know the whole story. It took me a long time to accept it but... I know you, Clarke. I knew there had to be a reason. You wouldn’t leave like that if something hadn’t happened. I just figured you were the one keeping secrets, not Bellamy.”

She reaches for Raven’s hand and squeezes it. “Thanks for waiting for me to come back.”

Raven smiles. “Thanks for coming back. Speaking of which, what happened to your eye candy?”

She laughs to herself. “She’s more than just eye candy.”

“Gross, not you too. I get enough of this shit from O.”

“Sorry. Can’t help it.”

“What’s the deal with you two? You’re actually a thing? Lincoln said he thought you were faking it.”

Clarke sits up and props herself against the pillows. “We _were._ It wasn’t even supposed to be a big deal, we just thought we’d pretend to date so I could come see Octavia. It was a few kisses here and there, nothing too confusing. We were careful. Then it just...” Clarke closes her eyes and shakes her head just remembering it all. “Got real.”

“So where is she now?”

“Work.”

Raven draws her eyebrows together and sits up, looking skeptical. “You buy that?”

“Not really, but I don’t think she’s lying. I just feel like I’m missing something. Doesn’t make sense, though. We didn’t even see each other more than once before she left, I got so wrapped up with you and O, I didn’t even have time to screw it up.”

“Maybe she’s jealous.”

That’s funny. As if Lexa could be jealous of anyone. There’s nobody who even comes close to her.

“She knows there’s nothing between Octavia and I. Besides, Lexa’s not like that.”

“Well, it’d make sense, wouldn’t it?”

Clarke pulls her legs up to sit cross-legged on the bed. “How so?”

“Isn’t she your best friend?”

“She’s more than that. But yeah.”

Raven shrugs. “Well you just got two other best friends back. Wouldn’t you feel weird if your only friend got new friends?”

That’s... fair. It still doesn’t add up. “But Lexa knows she still means a lot to me.”

“Does she?”

Clarke chews on her lip and goes through their last conversations in her head. Maybe there were a few things she could have misunderstood. _I just can’t wait for things to be normal again._ She could have phrased that better. _I have friends but... not_ them _. Not Raven and Octavia._ Oh. _I can get back to how it used to be. How it’s supposed to be._

“Shit.”

She doesn’t feel jealous, she feels rejected. Even worse than that, Lexa had opened up to her about being used before. And now here she is, completely blind to the fact that Lexa probably feels like a stepping stone that she accidentally caught feelings for.

“But we kissed before she left, she knows that I’m falling for her.”

“Insecurity’s a bitch.” Raven says. She’s right. Lexa probably convinced herself that all Clarke wants from her is a few dates and a good time. That’s not true at all. Clarke wants her to be more than that.

And then suddenly it hits her that maybe Lexa doesn’t want to be that for her. She has feelings for her, of course. That doesn’t change the fact that Lexa doesn’t date. Lexa doesn’t have girlfriends. If she thinks that’s all Clarke wants from her, she might not be willing to give that to her.

“Raven, did she leave me?”

All she gets from Raven is a look of pity.

-  
When she calls Lexa that night, she doesn’t pick up.

-

In true Clarke Griffin form, she compartmentalizes the hell out of her entire Lexa situation. Here’s what she knows:

  1. Lexa Woods has feelings for her.
  2. Those feelings are mutual and they’ve both acted on them.
  3. Lexa promised she would be back before the wedding.
  4. Any reason for Lexa to leave her can easily boil down to a misunderstanding.
  5. Tonight is Octavia’s bachelorette party and there isn’t a chance in hell that she’s about to let her own personal drama get in the way of a kickass party.



Everything’s going to be fine.

-

Raven was right about John Murphy. He shows up late to stage two of the party (skipping out on the club), slides into the limousine, and looks around to notice that he’s surrounded only by women.

“Just my luck,” he says with a smirk and settles between Clarke and Raven.

Raven was right, though. He’s a jackass with an unhealthy dependency on sarcasm, but he ends up being Clarke’s favorite of Octavia’s unfamiliar friends.

He’s also the same guy that had been in Bellamy’s room the other night; something Clarke only realizes when they reach good lighting just outside one of the bars they hit.

“Sorry about kicking you out the other night.” She says.

John just shakes his head and smiles. “It was tempting to stay behind and see Bellamy get his ass kicked, but I was little worried I’d get socked in the jaw or something.”

She likes him more than Bellamy. Mostly because he doesn’t try to hit on any of the girls at the party, and even acts as a fake boyfriend for a few of them when they give him the signal that says _scare this guy off for me._ She and John end up spending most of the night watching the single partygoers do body shots off strangers, get lap dances, and drink themselves stupid.

In all fairness, Clarke drinks enough to lose at least a few brain cells. Three bars and four drinks later, she sits next to John and watches Raven and Octavia get involved in a drinking game that she hasn’t figured out the rules for.

“So, if tomorrow’s the end of the world,” she says, only slurring her words a little, “What would you wanna do?”

John stares into the bottom of his White Russian. “Something stupid. Maybe I’d ask my roommate to marry me. She’d probably be just crazy enough to say yes.”

That catches her by surprise. So John’s a _romantic_. “What’s her name?”

“Emori.” He says her name carefully, like telling someone about her is fragile. Like a teeny, tiny, fragile bird...

Wow, she is _drunk_.

“Yeah, I’ve got one of those too.” Clarke says.

“What’s his name?”

“Lexa.” Clarke downs the rest of her drink. That’s five drinks now.

John does a double take and then laughs. “My bad.”

“Don’t worry ‘bout it.”

“You love her?”

Clarke frowns. She hadn’t thought about it. “She’s special.”

“Mine too.” John throws back the rest of his drink and sits up. “So. End of the world, then. What do you think you’ll do tonight?”

Clarke palms at the outline of the phone in her pocket. “Something stupid.”

-

She stumbles into the hallway where the bathrooms are at and to her credit, she stumbles because of the step she missed, not because she’s drunk.

Thought she is very, very drunk. That’s the reason she shouldn’t be dialing the number she’s dialing, but she has a very strong feeling that she _should_ be dialing it. She needs to dial it.

She hits send.

After four rings, Clarke stops counting and starts silently praying that she’ll pick up. She doesn’t, of course, and that’s for the best. Still, she pouts as she hears Lexa’s voice. She wants the real thing, not her automated “leave a message after the tone” recording.

The tone beeps and Clarke clears her throat. She bets she can make herself sound sober enough.

“Hi. _Hey_.” Two words in and that ship has sailed. “It’s-” She giggles. She hadn’t expected to be this much of a mess. “Hi,” she starts again, pulling herself together. “Iiiiiiiit’s Clarke.”

Holy fuck, she’s a disaster. She takes a deep breath.

“I know you’re not answering my calls anymore and... and that’s okay,” she adds, despite the frown on her face. “Because I know why and it’s just.” She sighs. “It’s my fault. I’m sorry.”

Clarke lingers on her thoughts, trying to place what she wanted to say. There was a point to calling her. She didn’t really expect her to pick up, but she has things to say and there’s no time like the present. The silence from the phone and the silence in her head tugs at her heart. Clarke faces the wall in front of her and slowly leans her forehead up against the wood, resisting the urge to bang her head against it. Instead, she just sighs dejectedly into her phone.

“I don’t want to fuck this up. I really like you. I was talking to the girls earlier tonight and-” Clarke cuts herself off and cringes. She didn’t want to mention them just in case she was right about this.

Fuck it. Damage is done.

“And then I met this guy and I don’t even know him but I couldn’t-” She shakes her head. “I couldn’t stop talking about you.” Clarke situates herself against the wall so that she can lean on her shoulder. “I just think about you a lot. Especially when you’re not here. You’re my best friend and I feel like maybe I don’t say that enough. But you’re more too, obviously, I mean-”

She rubs her temple with her free hand. What can she even say? What are they to each other? Lexa ran before they could even figure it out.

“You know what I mean. You always know what I mean, don’t you? I don’t want to lose that.” Her tongue turns to lead as she tries to make sense of what she wants from her. For a moment, words fall short of what she needs to say. But her time is running out, so Clarke just talks.

“I think this could be something,” she says. “Come kiss me again.”

 

 


End file.
